


be the one to stay

by smc_27



Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: AU, F/M, inspired by the movie 'a lot like love'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:48:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27417541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smc_27/pseuds/smc_27
Summary: “I’ll see you.”He gives her this truly gorgeous look, pulls his keys from his pocket. “Probably,” he says, and Allie doesn't want to think about fate, or luck, or timing, or chance, or any of that shit.But when she’s watching him back out of the driveway, all she’s thinking about is whether there’s something bigger at play here. If there’s a reason they keep seeing each other and a reason it never really feels quiteright, but definitely never feels wrong, either.
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman
Comments: 21
Kudos: 94





	be the one to stay

Allie is not a ‘go to parties to meet guys’ kind of person. She never has been and she hasn’t much interest in that changing. But she is a ‘go to parties to socialize with people she likes’ kind of person, and her roommate told her about this one. She had two midterms this week and has a small break in her schedule, so she has no reason not to wear a cute outfit and sip raspberry flavoured vodka with soda at this party in Somerville. Well, other than the fact that she definitely doesn’t live in this part of town and getting home later might be a pain in the ass. 

She’s had either three or four drinks. Four? No. Three. They’re just strong because Becca’s got a heavy hand and also said something about not wanting to cart the bottle back home after this. 

Either way, she’s very nicely buzzed, wants to stop drinking, and it’s hot as hell in this house. Becca knows one of the guys who lives here. Allie’s been coveting the crown moulding and then realizing that’s fucking weird. She steps outside for air, out into this little backyard that’s got shitty lawn chairs scattered around. Some people are out here smoking and talking. Allie just leans against the porch railing and pulls out her phone, checks a message from her sister, then another from her best friend. She opens Instagram because she’s bored and it’s one of the apps she cycles through when that’s the case. The picture she posted of her and Becca in their bathroom earlier when they were getting ready has a bunch of likes and comments. Allie smiles to herself and likes the cute ones, replies to a couple. 

The screen door slams closed nearby and she doesn’t really pay it any mind. She’s just opening her email when the light changes and she looks over and there’s this guy standing next to her in a blue button down, handsome face right there as he leans his hand on the railing so his shoulder’s tilted up a little on his right side. There’s a joint between his lips. 

“Important business to tend to?” he asks, and honestly, she sort of appreciates the teasing. Like, what is she doing, checking her email at a freaking party? 

“You know how it is.” He breathes a laugh through his nose, then pulls the joint out of his mouth. “Is that just a cute prop, or?”

He fully smiles, which sort of makes her feel...Well, good. Let’s just say good. He’s really kind of hot. 

“I lost my lighter, apparently.”

Allie opens her purse, this little black one she only uses when she’s going out, and fishes around until she gets her fingers on the hot pink Bic she bought at the corner store below their building. She sparks it, and he seems to hesitate leaning down to light his joint rather than taking the lighter from her, but if that’s some weird macho bullshit, she’s just going to ignore it. Anyway, she likes the way his eyes lock with hers until he needs to pay attention to what he’s doing. He exhales as he stands back upright, turns so he’s leaning back against the railing. 

He holds out the joint for her, but she shakes her head. 

“No thanks.” She holds up her cup and he nods knowingly. She stage whispers, “I think my roommate’s trying to get me loaded.”

He chuckles a little. “Why’s that?”

Allie shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m cute when I’m drinking?” 

He takes another hit, makes absolutely no effort to hide that he looks her up and down, and then turns his head just slightly to blow the smoke away from her. 

“I can see that.”

Allie looks up at him from under her lashes, resists the urge to fuss with her hair or do anything else to show she’s kind of shit at taking compliments. 

“I’m Allie,” she says, holding her hand out, because honestly it feels a little odd not to know his name at this point. She’s got no intentions of moving until her face feels less hot, and he’s going to be out here at least until that joint’s gone. 

“Harry.” He shakes her hand, but then doesn’t let go. He turns it so their palms are pressed together and he’s looking at the top of her hand, his thumb stroking across her knuckles, then sliding down. He’s holding her fingertips. She and Becca had gotten manicures last week when Allie’s mom sent them ‘fun money’ to do something for themselves. Allie’s pink polish is just starting to chip. 

Harry doesn’t even say anything. He just eventually lets go of her hand and he’s watching her when he takes another hit. He smiles when she pushes her hair back off her face, like he knows exactly what she’s doing and how she’s feeling about this stupid interaction. 

“Harvard?” she asks. She just...has a sense. 

“Mm. BU?”

“Northeastern.” He raises a brow, which...She doesn’t know why. “Sophomore.”

“Junior.” Allie nods. She feels too buzzed to carry on meaningful conversation with him, and then also too buzzed to try to sort out why she wants to. She leans her hand over the railing and dumps the contents of her cup out. He laughs, sets his right hand next to his hip. He’s hot in this lighting. She thinks with a face like that he’d be hot in any lighting. “Thank god.”

Allie laughs softly, uncertain. She looks up at him again. “What?”

He blows smoke away from them, grins, and keeps his eyes on her. “Definitely couldn’t handle you getting any cuter.” 

Allie sort of decides that moment that she wants to take him home. 

She is _really_ not a ‘go to parties to meet guys’ kind of person. But guys at parties are usually not as hot as Harry, and usually not as gentle in the way they show their interest. There’s something about this confidence he has that weirdly puts her at ease, and she likes it too much to throw it away just because she doesn’t usually do this kind of thing. 

So she musters the courage to say, “I have a feeling you could,” and is rewarded with a truly beautiful smile that makes her stomach sort of curl. “What are you studying, Harry?”

He looks like he likes that she’s used his name. Whatever. She doesn't know what to do with that.

“Law,” he says, and god, she almost could’ve guessed. He nods at her, smokes the last of his joint and then puts it out on the railing, tosses it into a coffee can near the door. “You?”

Allie twists her lips, knows that the reaction to her studies - particularly by guys - is usually weird. Because of course dudes act like the fact that she’s ambitious is odd or intimidating. But this guy is going to Harvard and taking law, so she thinks he won’t be so easily freaked out if she’s honest and direct about things. 

And why does she care one way or the other? She’s not trying to date him. And if he says something fucked up, she doesn’t have to keep talking to him or do anything more.

“Double major. Economics and philosophy.” 

His brow goes up and he smiles. Good reaction. 

“Casual,” he teases. Allie laughs a bit. “Hey, I don’t wanna sound too forward, but…” He stops when she pulls a face. She wishes she could hide it better. She’d be able to if she hadn’t had as much vodka as she has. “What?”

“You don’t get to ask me,” she tells him, then turns so her shoulders are squared to his. He narrows his eyes, but still looks slightly amused. “I was gonna ask you.”

He smiles full on again. “Ask me what?” he says, then crosses his arms and looks at her, waits.

She almost loses her nerve. But she settles herself when she realizes she doesn’t actually care if he says no; she can just go home alone, or back into the party to find Becca and drink more, or something.

“If you wanna get out of here.”

His brow goes up, and he...this look on his face is one she thinks she’ll have top of mind for a while. 

“I was just going to ask if I could get your number,” he says, and she genuinely believes him, feels silly for a second, but then remembers he hasn’t said no. “But I live nearby, if you’re serious.”

This is insane. Things like this never happen to her, much to Becca’s dismay. She takes a step towards him, sets her hand on his stomach over his shirt. He’s looking down at her, his arms still crossed. It’s like he just wants to know what she’s doing. What they’re doing together. And, she thinks, he’s following her lead. She likes that a lot. His whole approach here is working, and she’s not naive enough to assume that it isn’t because of practice. 

“Let me just go tell Becca?”

He nods, but then follows her into the house, holds the door open for her and laughs a little when she ducks under his arm. Last she saw Becca, she was in the kitchen; she’s not there now. Harry stops, grabs a shot of whiskey and talks to someone he seems to know. But he keeps his eye on her, too. She likes that more than she wants to say. 

Becca bounds in through the large archway into the kitchen just as Allie’s about to walk through. They sort of laugh, bumping into each other. Allie’s hands go to Becca’s waist, and Becca’s saying something about being out of vodka, so Allie’s shit out of luck if she wants more. Allie just shakes her head. 

“I um…” She almost looks over her shoulder at this guy she’s met, but resists the urge. “I think I’m gonna go?” Becca looks confused. Their pact is they always leave together unless one of them leaves with someone else. Even then, there are really serious rules around safety. “I met someone.”

Becca’s eyes go all wide and her hands go to Allie’s face. “ _Who_?” Allie chooses that moment to glance over at him. He’s watching her, sips his drink, gives a little smile. “Are you kidding me?”

“You know him?”

“No,” Becca laughs, shakes her head. “But he’s fine as fuck, so go you.” Becca then takes Allie’s hand in hers, and Allie just...This is their safety thing, and she’s not going to not do it, but she’s praying Becca doesn’t embarrass her. They stand in front of Harry and he just does that thing with his brow again like he’s amused, or whatever. “I’m Allie’s roommate.”

“Becca,” he says, and okay, that’s cute. “I’m Harry.”

Becca pulls her phone out of her purse and unlocks it, opens a new contact. “What’s your number?”

He glances at Allie, but rattles off his number and Becca texts him, then tells him to take out his phone. He does as he’s told, opens the message Becca’s just sent. One of hers and Allie’s rules is that the guy needs to give a real number and not be fucking weird about it. They also don’t apologize for this.

“We good?” he asks, after being cute and sending Becca the wave emoji. 

Becca gets a wicked grin on her lips and says, “Hopefully, for Allie’s sake,” all suggestively. Allie rolls her eyes, refusing to be embarrassed, and Harry just laughs. Becca kisses her cheek. “I’ll take an Uber. Text you when I get home. Call me if you need me and I’m there.”

Allie nods, and they say they love each other, and then she looks at Harry and he pushes himself off the counter all casual, follows her towards the front door. When they’re outside on the sidewalk Allie almost wants to check in and make sure he’s okay with what just happened, but he truly seems unbothered. 

“You two are smart,” he says, and turns onto the sidewalk, so she follows. 

“Thanks.” There's a silence she kind of hates. “Can’t be too careful.” He nods, and she wishes she’d brought a jacket. “How far are we going?”

“Couple blocks.” He looks over at her. “We don’t have to. If you’re losing your nerve, or whatever.”

Allie’s jaw drops, and she turns, walks down the sidewalk backwards, looking at him. “Don’t underestimate me, Harry.”

He smirks at her, slips a hand into his pocket, says. “Okay,” like he’s taking everything about her as it comes. 

But she also doesn’t really know what the fuck she’s talking about. She’s never done this before, gone home with a random guy after meeting him and talking for like, 10 minutes. And she’s not the kind of person who usually notices this shit, but she sort of likes his energy. Like, she’s not stupid. It’s really clear he doesn’t need her, specifically, to go home with him. There’s no way he couldn’t walk into any party or bar in town and pick up any single girl he wanted. Probably some girls who aren’t single, too. This isn’t even about her ego, about being flattered that he chose her. She knows she could have a lot of guys, too. There’s just something about them together - about the way he approached her and the way she responded - that she just really likes. A lot. Enough to want to have sex with him. That part, she’s so far still very sure of. God, _look_ at him. 

“My sister’s studying law,” she says, because the silence is annoying and she wants to fill it with something other than their footsteps. 

“Oh yeah? Here?”

She shakes her head, gives him a little grin. “The other one.” Harry rolls his eyes. She figures he knows what she means, but she clarifies, “Yale,” anyway.

“You’re close in age,” he observes, and Allie shrugs. 

“Irish twins,” she says, which makes him laugh. “My mom’s crazy smart and driven, and she wanted to have us before gunning for an exec position.”

Harry’s lips curve like he can understand the logic, thinks it makes sense. “Smart. My sister’s 10 years younger than me.” 

Allie raises her brow. She wraps her arms around herself. She’s fucking freezing. Harry seems to notice, slides his arm around her waist smoothly. She looks to the ground instead of up at him, because she thinks it’d be weird to show how much she _likes_ this. This is supposed to be a hookup, not like...Not anything other than that.

“My family is...complicated,” he says quietly. She looks up at him then, because she’s not an asshole and she isn’t going to just blow past that. “But anyway.”

“ _Anyway_.” She’s teasing him. He chuckles, and then she puts her arm around his waist, too. He’s very warm. 

Harry gestures towards this sort of really cute house with dark blue siding, and her brow goes up. He must rent a room, or it’s split into apartments, or something. There’s a sleek car in the driveway - one of the fancy kinds whose emblem she isn’t familiar with. He unlocks the front door and it’s quiet when they walk in. The place is tidy, too. Allie glances around, and he must think she’s looking for roommates. Which she kind of is, but also just thinks this house is nice, and nicely decorated. It’s definitely not apartments, either.

“I live alone,” he says, and then unties his sneakers, his hand braced on the wall. Allie kicks off her ankle boots and pulls her purse off, sets it on this little table where he’s set down his keys, too. 

“This is nice.”

“I like the quiet.” She’s getting the sense he feels weird about how he lives, or thinks she’ll think it’s weird, or something. She doesn’t. She and Becca live in a two bedroom walkup, but she knows damn well if she had ‘live alone while in college’ money, she’d definitely be doing that. “I’m not really good with people.”

The fact that he says it while smirking makes her think he knows it’s bullshit. 

“Clearly,” she says quietly, steps closer to him. He reaches out for her, settles his hands on her waist. “You obviously don’t know what to do with me at all.” 

He lets out this heavy breath, then wets his bottom lip, and all she wants is to get her hands into his hair, honestly. Is that weird? It just looks so soft. 

“Maybe you’re different.” He can barely keep a straight face, which she appreciates. This is quite silly. “You are pretty easy to talk to.”

Allie almost wants to roll her eyes. “Mhm. That’s why I’m such a hit with the boys.”

She likes making him laugh.

“It’s kind of working for this one.”

She feels his fingers slip beneath the fabric of her shirt at her back. He’s looking down at her and she just...She wants to kiss him. Why aren’t they kissing? She tips her chin up a little, looks at his mouth. 

“Is it working enough for you to take me upstairs?”

Harry moves one of his hands, brings it up to her face to touch her cheek, and her heartrate speeds up a little as he leans in. Allie closes her eyes just as he kisses her. It’s _good_ , too. Just gentle, easy. Sort of like everything else has been between them tonight. And god, she likes that so much. Like he’s trying, but he’s not _trying_. There’s this confidence under this sort of self deprecating thing he’s doing. It’s hot. 

And he does take her upstairs. And she sort of loves the way he looks at her after he’s gotten her shirt off, the way he tugs his own down off his shoulders as he keeps his eyes on her. She definitely likes the way he asks if he can go down on her - like he really wants to know her answer, not just because it’s sexy to talk this way. And then, after her first orgasm, he feels fucking _good_ inside her. When she’s about to come again, he’s kissing her and she has to literally push him away - which she thinks he _likes_ \- to cry out. 

She dozes off a bit, and so does he. His hand is heavy and warm on her stomach, which she likes a lot. She can’t help that her body goes a little limp, and his bed is comfortable, and she thinks these sheets are probably really expensive. When she opens her eyes, she sees on this fancy clock he has next to his bed that it’s 2:30. If she leaves now, she’ll hopefully be in her own bed by 3:00 and can still get several hours of uninterrupted sleep. It’s really fucking tempting to stay here and see if he wants to have sex again in the morning, but...Well, she’s never done this before and doesn’t want to overstay her welcome.

She pulls away from him gently, and thinks the little sound of protest he makes is somewhat cute. As she reaches for her clothes, he turns, eyes open but narrowed like he’s really good and sleepy. His hair’s adorably messy and...Yeah, the temptation to stay is growing. 

“You’re leaving?” he asks, and she hears only the slightest bit of disappointment there. It more sounds like he’s just confirming it. Allie nods, pulls her underwear up her legs. “You don’t have to.”

She smiles. It’s sweet of him to say. She leans over to kiss him, and he’s definitely half asleep; he reaches for her hip but misses, his hand landing on her thigh instead. His head falls back against his pillow. Allie fastens her bra, then pulls her pants up. Harry watches all this in the dim lighting, just whatever’s bleeding through the curtains. As she pulls her shirt on, he sighs like there’s something he wants to say. She looks at him, waits. He says nothing. 

“This was fun,” she tells him, and he smiles tiredly. God, he looks good lying there with the covers halfway up his torso. “I had fun with you.”

He hums, opens his arm invitingly. Shit. “I had fun with you, too.”

She sets her knee on the bed again, leans over and takes his chin in her hand, kisses him a little dirtier than she should since she’s leaving. It pulls this low sound from somewhere deep in his throat and makes him push his hand into her hair, which is probably something he discovered earlier she really quite likes. 

“Goodnight, Harry.” 

He pushes up to kiss her again, just quickly, then lies back down. “Night, Allie.”

She walks herself out - kind of digging that he didn’t even offer, so take that for whatever it is - and makes sure the door is locked behind her when her Uber pulls up. Becca texted her 20 minutes ago that she was just getting home, so Allie messages that she’s on the way. When she gets in, Becca’s sleeping already in her bed, her clothes from the night in a heap on her bedroom floor. Allie nudges Becca to tell her she’s home; her friend just lets out some kind of groan in acknowledgement and Allie goes to her own room, closes the door behind her. She strips down again and gets into bed. 

It’s really fucked up, but she feels sort of incredibly proud of herself for her first one night stand. No, no not even that. Her first one night stand with a guy who was hot as fuck and also really kind of nice and _also_ , importantly, good in bed. 

It’s three weeks before she gives into the temptation to maybe have him again, works up the nerve to ask Becca for his number. Becca laughs and gives Allie a _look_ and says she deleted his number and that message literally the next day. Allie feels stupid for asking, for wanting it, and chalks it up to not meant to be. All she has is his address in the ride sharing app, and she is absolutely not going full stalker for some dick. She’s just not. It’s really not that big a deal. He’s not the first guy to give her a decent orgasm and isn’t the only one who can manage it. And besides, she should be focusing on school. 

By December, she’s almost entirely forgotten him, until she’s out with Sam and sees a guy with similar hair and she does a double take. Her cousin asks what that was about and she laughs at herself - genuinely laughs - and tells him she just thought she saw someone she knows. She can’t decide if that - ‘someone she knows’ - feels like a lie or the truth.

… … …

Harry isn’t the kind of guy who believes in fate. He’s had too much bad shit happen to him to think any kind of suffering is a virtue or predestined or ‘meant to be’. He thinks shit just happens to you and you have to figure out how to deal with it. Some of his ways are healthy and some of them aren’t. Well, historically. He’s definitely got better coping mechanisms now when the bad things crop up. Not saying shit isn’t still a struggle. That his mental health isn’t still a struggle. But he’s good, mostly. He’s good. He just needs to ground himself in reality a lot and give himself time to process things and also use his medication when he needs to, when things get a little frayed and panicky. 

What the fuck is he saying? 

Right. Look. He doesn’t think things are fated. But the way this woman catches his attention again just by standing still and doing nothing is…

It’s not even _this woman_ , it’s _that_ woman. The one from something like two years ago. The girl he picked up and took home from a party and just really felt comfortable with. Which never happens to him. It’s not like he’s been kicking himself for two years for not getting her number or even texting her friend for it. It’s just that it’s rare he feels that way about someone. He’s probably exaggerating it in his head. She was hot and good in bed and didn’t annoy him when they were talking. 

Right now, she’s standing on the same beach in Cape Cod where his grandparents happen to have a beach house they’re not using because they’re summering in Italy. Right now, she’s wearing a pink bikini and this floral coverup thing that really isn’t covering anything. Right now, she’s talking on the phone to someone and he’s walking towards her because that’s the direction he’s going, and now she happens to be standing directly in his path. 

She looks up from where she’s been digging her toes in the sand, sees him, ends her call, and smiles at him. Her hair’s sort of different than he remembers. Still pretty, but less curled. Beachy waves, or some other similar thing he’s learned of via osmosis or whatever. But he thinks this style on her is natural and not manipulated like other people have to do. Why the hell is he thinking about her hair so much?

“Hey,” she says sweetly when he approaches. Harry looks her face over once, then figures she looks pretty happy to see him, leans down with his hand on her arm and kisses her cheek. 

“Hi.”

“What are you doing here?”

Yeah, her eyes with the ocean as a backdrop are kind of making him think things he normally doesn’t. Like the fact that she’s even more gorgeous than he remembers. And that he hopes she isn’t in a rush. That he hopes she’s here alone. Which is insane, because who in their age group comes to the beach alone? Other than him. But that feels different.

“I have a place,” he tells her, nodding up the beach over her shoulder. He can see his house but knows that doesn’t really mean anything to her. 

She lets out a little laugh. “Of course you do,” she says, and he doesn’t know how she manages to toe the line of pointing out his wealth and not being an asshole about it, but he appreciates it a lot. He remembers appreciating it a couple years ago, too.

“You?”

“Friends trip,” she says, and Harry nods. “Do you remember my roommate?”

He nods. “Yeah. Um. Starts with a B, right?”

She smiles at him like she’s impressed, or something. “Becca.” She hesitates a moment, eyes shining. “Do you remember my name?”

Harry crosses his arms, lifts his brow. “Do you remember mine,” he asks, and then tacks on, “Allie?” because he needs her to know he isn’t bullshitting about having remembered. 

She lets out a laugh, shakes her head a little almost like she’s feeling silly, or something, for having asked him. But it’s a legitimate question. He’s not bothered.

“I remember,” she says, and...yeah, fuck. She’s looking at him from under her lashes like she’s remembering a whole lot more than just his _name_. He doesn’t hate that or even dislike it a little. 

He really doesn’t think he can invite her back to his place. Well, he considers two things. He doesn’t think he can invite her back to his place in a way that doesn't make him seem gross, and he doesn’t think he can invite her back to his place in a way that’ll make her want to say yes. They’ve literally only said hello. He’s just feeling the same thing he felt when they met that other night. Which is that he likes her and wants to be around her somewhere there’re less people. 

“Where’re your friends?” She rolls her eyes, which makes him laugh. “Uh oh.”

“No, it’s fine. They just all went too late last night and I got bored waiting for them to wake up.”

“And you don’t get hungover?”

She breathes a laugh, tilts her head. “I didn’t drink to excess.” He nods, then puts a hand in the pocket of his shorts. He feels his phone there, knows it’d be really easy to just ask her for her fucking number, but he hesitates. “Are you here with family?”

He takes a breath, shakes his head. “Nah. Just me. My mom tried to unload my sister on me for the week, but it didn’t work out.” Allie’s lips quirk like she’s trying not to laugh. “I’m here all summer, so I’m sure it’ll happen.”

“It can’t be that bad.” She seems really convinced of it. He’s not gonna get into why he doesn’t want to spend a bunch of time alone with his 12 year old sister who’s currently so obsessed with cheerleading even his mom thinks it’s annoying. “I was just out for a walk and my sister called, actually.”

Harry gives her a soft look. The wind blows her hair around and she gathers it with both hands, pulls it over her shoulder. There’s a lock that sort of goes rogue, whipping around her face. Harry keeps his eyes on it, reaches out to tuck it in with the rest. Allie’s just watching him. 

“I was just walking, too.” It’s true. He likes to be on the beach before it’s crowded for the day. Allie’s looking at him and he just… “I have iced tea and bagels at my place, if you’re hungry?”

She presses her lips together when she tips her head back, the sun bouncing off her cheek bone. Then she says, “Is that all you’re asking me?”

Harry’s brow furrows. He knows what she’s getting at, but it’s literally like 11am and he knows she’s here with people. He’s not propositioning her. 

“I mean, I have a few different kinds of cream cheese, too,” he says, and she lets out this laugh that makes him smile too wide. “Some fruit, if that’s not too presumptuous.”

Allie presses her palm to his chest, shoves a little, and tells him to stop. He just laughs and starts walking, asks her to remind him again of her major, because he’s forgotten. He knows where she went to school and that she was doing a double major, just can’t recall the specific program. Then she tells him she’s doing her masters with a PhD track and he looks at her like he’s impressed. Because he is.

She rolls her eyes. “Stop. As if Harry Last Name, Esquire, isn’t your goal.”

“Bingham,” he says quietly, looking down at the sand. He can feel her eyes on him, so he slides his towards her. “Harry Bingham.”

Allie nudges him with her elbow. “ _Esquire_ ,” she adds, and he won’t lie and say he doesn’t find it hot. She lets out a small laugh as they walk up towards his house and she looks up at it. He knows how this looks. “I’m not even going to ask where else you have houses, and instead just assume there are several.”

She’s not wrong. He just smiles at her as he unlocks the door and holds it open for her. 

“This one’s my grandparents’,” he informs her, and she runs her fingers along the live edge table as they walk past. It separates the ocean-view living room from the kitchen. Allie then leans her elbows on the kitchen island, and shit, she’s just...Really hot. He thinks he’s staring. He thinks she likes it. He turns away, pulls open the bread box. “Plain? Everything? What’s your poison?”

“Blueberry?” she asks, and he grabs one from the bag, holds it up and then slices, drops it in the toaster. He can feel her watching him as he opens the fridge, grabs the pitcher of iced tea and the cream cheese. He hears her let out this soft sound like maybe she doesn’t know what to do with him, or something. Then, when he turns around, she’s leaning one elbow on the counter, her body angled so she’s looking out at the ocean. “This is gorgeous. You’re lucky.”

“I know,” he says genuinely, because it’s true. She must like the answer, because she looks back at him again, this soft, pretty smile on her lips. He pours her a glass and slides it towards her on the counter. She seems to want to say something about the gold rimmed glasses, but whatever. He didn’t pick any of this shit out. “My grandparents are...interesting people. Both retired now, and mostly do philanthropic stuff. My grandpa was a lawyer, too. Grandma was in real estate.”

“Hence the multiple homes.”

He nods once. “Hence the multiple homes.” Allie smiles, plays with her glass. “What about you?”

She laughs through her nose. Her bagel comes up out of the toaster and he sets it in front of her on a plate, pushes the cream cheese her way and hands her a knife. He thinks it’s weird when people want someone else to control the amount of cream cheese on their bagels. Like, that feels like a decision one should make on their own, right?

“Ah, you know. Just your run of the mill oil magnates. Both sides, actually.” Harry rolls his eyes, considers calling her a smartass. “No, my grandparents on my dad’s side were both teachers. On my mom’s side, my grandpa was a car salesman and my grandma was a stay at home mom.” 

She sounds like she’s almost worried what he’ll say, which sort of bothers him until he remembers they really don’t know each other and she has no reason to think he’s just not some rich asshole who looks down on anyone who doesn’t have money. He’s not even saying she doesn’t have money. The whole point is he doesn’t know anything about her situation, and therefore isn’t going to judge. 

“I never met my grandparents on my mom’s side,” he tells her, and she stops lifting her bagel to take a bite, looks right at him. “They died in a car accident before I was born.”

The look on her face is so genuinely sympathetic it sort of makes him feel good. And he was wondering if they’d talk about parents, but now he’s not sure he should say anything about his dad, lest she think he’s got the saddest fucking story around.

Once his bagel’s up, he gestures to the back deck because he likes eating out there and it’s nice in the mornings in particular. There’s a little porch swing along with some other furniture, and he smiles to himself when she goes to the swing like he thought she would. She tugs her coverup thing over herself, though it’s sheer and he can still see. Not that he’s being gross and staring. He just thinks it’s funny.

“Tell me what school’s like, Harvard boy,” she says, and Harry sort of appreciates the subject change.

“I’m sure the same as yours, Dr. Allie Last Name.”

Allie laughs around a bite of her food, shakes her head and then thumbs away a little cream cheese from the corner of her mouth. He knows she knows he’s watching as she licks it off. 

“Pressman.” He smiles, liking that she’s played this little game with him. 

They actually do talk about school. About both their experiences. And he actually kind of hates it when people make a big thing of him going to Harvard. He knows what that says about him - he’s smart and connected and most assume he has money. But he doesn’t feel the way about it that he did when he was 17 and 18 and throwing the name around like his whole identity was hinged upon it. When he says all this out loud, Allie agrees. She tells him she got into Georgetown but turned it down for a bunch of reasons she insists she won’t get into. She says she just likes Boston as a city and felt at home at Northeastern in a way she didn’t feel in DC or at Georgetown. She tells him she and Becca went to high school together, have been friends since they were kids. Becca went to Boston University and they had planned from the start to live together after their first years living in campus housing to meet people and whatever. Now Becca’s graduated and looking for work, waiting tables as she tries to get a job doing marketing somewhere. 

Harry doesn’t mind hearing about Becca, but he sort of wants Allie to talk more about herself.

He’s about to tell her so when she sets her hand on his shoulder and leans over, presses a gentle kiss on his lips and then pulls away too quickly for him to even really respond. But he pushes his hand into her hair anyway, gets close enough to kiss her again, and feels her smile against his mouth. 

“I really just thought we’d have breakfast,” he tells her, and she laughs a little in his ear, her fingers playing with the collar of his shirt. 

“You seem pretty okay with kissing me,” she counters. And like, yeah. He is. She looks right at him, then down at his lips again, and stands, reaches for his hand. She doesn’t take her eyes off him once as she goes to the door. He stands too, but it feels weird to leave dishes outside, so he stops to grab those. 

“Upstairs. Second door on the left,” he tells her, and maybe it’s the slightest bit forward, but he doesn’t think she was just going inside and trying to get him to go with her for no reason. No, he’s got a pretty good read on what she wanted.

She’s standing in his bedroom, thumbing through the book he’s got on the bedside table when he joins her. She turns around and he leans his shoulder against the wall. She slips that coverup off her shoulders and he lets himself look her up and down in her bikini, thinking she probably won’t mind it.

She tells him, “Come here,” and he pushes off the wall, gives her what she wants. 

He likes the way she starts unbuttoning his shirt when they’re kissing. The way she’s already wearing next to nothing and seems to want him in the same. He definitely thinks it’s sexy that she lets out a little moan when he gets his hands into her hair again. And then again when she scrapes her teeth gently along his bottom lip. He has her lie back on his bed, and watches her close her eyes as she lifts her hips so he can tug her bottoms down. She makes the best sounds, and he thinks he could honestly get really used to her saying his name like that. Her fingers are in his hair at the back of his head when she comes, when he’s on top of her, and then she rolls her hips and he’s just...

Look, maybe he wasn’t making it up or overblowing it for two years and sex with her really is as good as he’s made it out to be in his memory. 

He’s barely coming down, lying next to her with her hand against his ribs when her phone starts ringing. 

She says, “Oh, fuck,” like maybe she’s forgotten something, or whatever, and gets up fast. Harry leans up on his elbow, watches her find her phone and answer. She’s still naked and he wants to enjoy the way she looks before she inevitably leaves. “Hi.” He’s at least a little amused that she’s fully naked, playing with her hair, trying to sound casual like she didn’t just have what he thinks was a pretty damn good orgasm. “No, I know. I just...Lost track of time.”

Harry can’t help the sound he lets out. It’s like a laugh, or something. She spins around, eyes narrowed, but she’s still flushed in the cheeks from sex and she’s absolutely smiling at him, too. She looks fucking incredible like this.

“I’ll be there in 15,” she says, and Harry knows he pouts a little. She looks away. “Make it 20, actually.”

Okay, so. He feels like he’s won at least five minutes more of her time. He’s almost positive he could gun for more if she were within reach, so he sits up, reaches for her wrist and slides his fingers over her skin until he’s holding her hand. She moves closer to him without him having to do anything more than that. Then she surprises the hell out of him by getting right on top of him while she’s still talking to whoever she’s talking to. She sets her hand on his chest and pushes so he’ll lie back, but his hands slide up her thighs anyway. 

“Half hour, at most,” she says, looking right down at him. He smirks at her, lets his fingers drag back down her thighs. She takes a sharp breath. She says something else before hanging up, but he’s distracted thinking about how much better this would feel without the sheet between them. “You’re bad.”

“Am I?” he asks on a laugh, pushes up so he’s sitting up and they’re face to face. She nods, but drapes her arms over his shoulders, her hand going into his hair. “Or are you just bad at resisting temptation?”

Her jaw drops, which is somehow a cute reaction, even though what he does in response is reach up and run his thumb along her bottom lip, and what _she_ does is take his thumb into her mouth when she’s looking right at him. So. 

As he’s drawing his thumb back down her chin and along her jaw, he asks, “What do you need those extra 15 minutes for, Allie?”

She kisses him, her tongue pressing into his mouth, and then moans when he reaches down between them to touch her. 

“You decide,” she says, and Harry fucking _loves_ that answer. 

He gets her onto her back, goes down on her and she’s a little more vocal this time when she comes. Which he doesn’t hate in the slightest. Nor does he hate the way her hand is in his hair or the way she wraps her other hand around his as it rests on her hip. She squeezes hard and doesn’t let go until she’s coming down, breaths all heavy, and he’s moving back up her body. She literally pushes him away because she’s all sensitive, and he’s definitely feeling smug about that. 

She asks him for the time as she’s getting dressed. He tells her, laughs when she curses again. She pulls her bikini top on, and then that cover up thing again, and asks how her hair looks. He likes it, thinks it’s quite hot, but knows she’s not asking his opinion; she’s asking if it looks like she’s been having sex this morning. Which it does. So he points to the bathroom and she steps in, makes some noise like she thinks it’s bad. Harry reaches for a pair of sweats, has pulled them on by the time she’s walking back towards him. 

“Walk me out?” she asks, grabs her phone off the bed. He follows her downstairs, and she kisses him by the back door. He doesn’t let go of her hips, and she doesn’t seem in a mad rush to leave, until her phone chimes twice in a row. “I have to go.”

Yeah, she sounds a little desperate. 

“You can’t leave without giving me your number.”

She pulls away, reaches for the door. He knows he looks a little desperate. “We’re going to that bonfire tonight. Meet me there? Like, 9:30?”

He smiles, nods at her. He wasn’t intending on going, but he will now. Fuck. He thinks he’d go just about anywhere she asked right now. 

She blows him a kiss, slips out the door and Harry watches her run down the steps and along the sand towards wherever it is she’s staying. 

He showers, makes his bed and thinks about how wild it is that he ran into her, that they still seem to have this kind of easy rhythm that he hasn’t felt with a lot of other people. He thinks he likes her. Like, the first time was definitely just about hooking up. This time, he really likes the way she laughs, and how easy it is to talk to her. He thinks it was that way a couple years ago, too. He can sort of remember bringing it up. Or her bringing it up? Either way, there was some sort of conversation about how they were good at talking. He’s doubling down on that, now. It’s more important to him. He’s not saying he isn’t interested in hookups anymore, but that’s definitely not _all_ he’s interested in. Not with someone like Allie. Not when it feels like he wants to get to know her better.

It’s 4pm when his mom calls to tell him his sister’s broken her arm at cheer practice and it’d be a huge help if he could come for a week or so to help her. There’s talk of surgery and recovery and his mom’s got a job, and all that. 

It probably makes him a shit brother that he considers saying no. It probably makes him a shit brother that he wants to ask if it can wait til tomorrow. 

As he’s merging onto the interstate, he feels really very much like he’s missing his chance with Allie. He should’ve insisted on her leaving his number before she left. It wouldn’t have taken more than another minute. He’s not mad at her for leaving - she had to go and he gets that. He just…

When he’s sitting by his sister’s hospital bed and waiting for her to wake up from the anesthesia, he gives in and types Allie’s name into Google on his phone. He feels like a fucking creep for doing it. What he finds is an Instagram account that’s locked - which doesn’t even matter because he doesn’t use Instagram - but he doesn’t even know if it’s her, or just someone else with the same name. There’s a news article about a high school debate team, and an outdated staff listing from some small town non-profit. 

He knows he could try harder to track her down, but even this feels fucking weird and like he’s crossing a line. She invited him to a bonfire, not to scrub the internet for a way to contact her. It feels really fucking different. 

His sister wakes up an hour later, and he doesn’t think she really understands what he’s saying when he tells her, “You better really understand how much I love you.”

She looks like she wants to cry. He knows she was scared and happy he’s here. Their mom’s off talking to doctors. Harry moves closer to the bed and teases her about her cast until she lets out a little laugh. 

… … …

Allie is absolutely not the girl who cries when her friend moves out of their apartment and straight to New York City. After putting in a couple years at this agency in Boston, Becca landed a job at this startup in New York on their client services team. Allie doesn’t even really know what that means, but it sounds amazing and the salary is better, and Becca negotiates for equity based on Allie’s recommendation. They’ve lived together for literally six years and when Allie walks inside after watching Becca drive away, she just…

She doesn’t _want_ to cry. This place has been her home for so long - _Becca_ has been her home for so long - and now Becca isn’t here and almost everything’s packed away. Allie, too, is moving out. Next weekend she’ll move all her stuff to this tiny one bedroom in Beacon Hill that she sort of loves. Her things are packed, except some kitchen essentials and the clothes she’s rotating through. Her ex had promised to help her, but that was before he was her ex.

Yeah, losing her best friend, her apartment, and her boyfriend all in the same few weeks is really sort of fucking getting to her. If it wasn’t early summer - if she had the stress of school on top of this - she’d really not be able to cope at all. 

She needs to get out of here. It’s too hot and she’s sweat through her bra and shirt already just from sweeping the apartment to tidy up after moving Becca out. And, frankly, it’s just hard to be in here alone right now. She’s delaying the inevitable, but that’s her prerogative. She pulls her hair up in a ridiculous bun on top of her head and has a shower, tugs on these denim shorts she should get rid of but refuses to. She pulls her hair down and then secures it in a ponytail that looks somewhat decent, and only reaches for her white tank top and finishes dressing right before she grabs her purse and keys and leaves. 

She doesn’t even know where she’s going. She ends up in the park near her place, because the walking trails aren’t that busy for some reason, and there’s some nice tree coverage so she’s not in the blazing sun. The flowers are blooming, too, and she loves flowers, so it’s kind of nice to just wander without an agenda or a place to be. 

She takes a selfie and sends it to Becca with the message _’First walk through the park without you 😩’_ and then considers what to get for dinner, because she is hungry and she doesn’t feel like heating up the apartment anymore by cooking. She’s scrolling UberEats on her phone and weighing her options when she notices a bench nearby in the shade and figures she can sit and pass some time, people watch when she’s not got her eyes on her phone. 

She’s aimlessly scrolling Instagram when she hears her name, looks up, confused, and sees Harry walking towards her. 

He isn’t alone. Allie’s mad immediately. 

Not that he’s not alone. No, not that he’s walking with this pretty brunette in a sundress that makes her legs look longer than they probably are. Not that the woman has her arm looped through his. Not that he looks _so_ fucking good Allie can’t help remembering that morning at the end of last summer when she randomly bumped into him out of town and ended up in bed with him again. 

She’s mad because she invited him to come somewhere, to show up and be rewarded with what he’d asked for, and he’d stood her up. At first she’d felt stupid for not just giving him her number, but then she’d felt stupid for inviting him at all when clearly he’d gotten what he actually wanted and that was enough. If he didn’t want to work hard enough to get anything more, that’s his shit and had nothing to do with her. She just felt silly, like she should’ve known better. She was foolish to think the guy who’d gotten her into bed so quickly, so easily - twice - would put in work or even be interested in dating. And that’s not even all his fault. She’s the one who kissed him, right? Both times, she’d initiated something more. Whether or not he’d been telling the truth, either time, about sleeping with her not being his intention, he still did it. 

She doesn’t like feeling like he played her. It pisses her off. 

Her ego is bruised. And it really doesn’t help that this woman on his arm looks like a goddamn supermodel, and Allie’s wearing shorts she cut off from a pair of boyfriend jeans she had since she was 15, and an Old Navy tank top.

“Hey,” he says after she’s looked up. He looks really happy to see her. She has no idea how to react, but she’s pretty sure it’s messy that he’s acting this way with her - his two night stand - when he’s clearly involved with someone else and she’s _standing right there_. “How are you?”

Allie forces a smile, and she thinks he can tell - she watches his expression falter a little, just for a second. 

“I’m fine. How are you?” This woman next to him must not be too threatened, because she doesn’t seem bothered or to even really register there could possibly be a history. Which makes Allie feel like shit. Which she hates. She holds out her hand. “I’m Allie.”

Harry recovers easily as the two women shake hands. “Allie and I are old acquaintances,” he says, and the woman smiles and he turns to Allie, his eyes sort of apologetic. “This is my girlfriend, Anya.”

What the fuck would he be apologizing for? Does he really think she’s somehow hung up on him after almost a year and him standing her up? Is he that fucking self-important? Like, no, she hasn’t just been pining all this time, hoping and wishing to see him again so she could express her interest even after something like 11 months. 

Fuck this guy. 

“Nice to meet you,” Allie says, and god, she really doesn’t have any interest in continuing this conversation, but seeing as she was literally sitting on a park bench doing nothing when they approached, she feels like she can’t escape. She hates that, too. 

“Hey,” Harry says, and reaches for his phone out of his pocket. “You changed your number, right?” 

The look on his face...She’s honestly tempted to out him to his girlfriend. He’s practically pleading with her to go along with it, to give him what he wants. He could’ve had her number. It’s incredibly fucked up of him to try to trick her into giving it now by putting her on the spot in front of this stranger who he obviously has a vested interest in not finding out that Allie’s just some girl he fucked and never actually saved in his phone. 

So she’s absolutely not going to give him the satisfaction of thinking this is okay. 

“Nope,” she says sweetly, and her smile is smug and genuine, which she thinks he recognizes pretty much right away. “It’s the same.” She checks the time, then stands. “I have to get going. Good to see you, Harry. And nice to meet you, Anya.”

She walks away just after she’s noticed the disappointed look on his face. It just really feels like entirely not her problem. 

It’s weird that he was asking now, when he’s attached. Why would he still want to be in touch with Allie? Does he think they could be _friends_? She also wonders if he just caught her on a bad day and if she wasn’t upset already she might not be so bothered. But no, she still thinks she would've had all those feelings from last summer come back to her just seeing him, even if Becca hadn’t moved, and if the guy Allie thought she was in love with hadn’t told her she was too much and not fun enough anymore. 

She really doesn’t need someone like Harry in her life, complicating things. She doesn’t want it. They had what they had and that was fun until it wasn’t. 

… … …

Harry is not a ‘drown your sorrows in drink’ kind of person. Not anymore. Not since he was told that isn’t a viable coping mechanism and that if he continued to do it, he was going down a path that could fuck up his life. Anyway, this isn’t even that fucking deep. He just missed something obvious in a case study and feels like an idiot about it. No one’s ever as hard on him as he is on himself, and he feels like he needs to be better. He kind of just wants the drink as a break. So he can put a deliberate thing between that and everything that comes after. Take a breath, have a drink, then move the fuck on. 

It’s fucking freezing out, and it was already dark out when he left the library. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, flipped his collar up to cover his neck, and decided to stop for a drink at this spot he likes on his way home. Just something to warm his cheeks and feel good in his hand. He should eat, too, but he’ll do that when he gets in. He’ll be here for like 20 minutes and then go home, where he doesn’t really stock a bunch of alcohol, eat something quick and keep studying. 

The bartender tries to make small talk with him like she usually does. She’s not hitting on him, or anything, just being friendly. And it’s not like he’s in here more than once a month, or whatever. He doesn’t even take his coat off, not even when she sets the drink in front of him. It’s just a double of this cheap whiskey he likes more than he’ll ever admit out loud. 

He’s watching the hockey game on the television above the bar, though he doesn’t give a shit about hockey and barely understands the rules. It’s something to look at. He doesn’t even really register that the bar door has opened, except it blows all this cold air in. 

Then he hears a laugh and then someone’s sitting on the stool next to him. 

Allie’s unwrapping her scarf from around her neck, setting her little black mittens on the bar in front of her. He turns more towards her, tilts his head, can’t believe she’s sitting here next to him. 

She looks a little happier to see him than last time they ran into each other. Rather, she doesn’t look like she doesn’t want to talk to him. Which is a thing he appreciates. His first instinct when he saw her in June was to talk to her. He knows why she acted the way she did. He gets it. He wanted her number so he could explain. And yeah, he was with Anya, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t - doesn’t - owe it to Allie to tell her what happened and that he didn’t just decide not to see her again that evening. He didn’t stand her up deliberately. 

Harry takes his coat off. 

“You owe me a drink,” she says, instead of hello. He raises his brow and leans his forearm on the bar. Allie’s looking up at the television. 

Are they just not going to talk about the fact that it’s sort of fucked up they keep randomly bumping into each other? 

“Do I?”

“Oh yeah,” she says on a laugh, then slides her eyes his way and he notices the little grin on her lips. He flags down the bartender and Allie orders herself a gin and tonic, then finally turns to look at him. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks. 

She lets out a little laugh, shakes her head. “A date with some smug Harvard guy, against my better judgment.” She ticks her brow up like she’s daring him to ask further questions about that or take offence to it. “He bought me a coffee and then spent an hour talking about how impressive he is.”

Harry lets out a quick breath. “Charming.” Her drink arrives and she says thank you to the bartender. “You fall for it?”

“Mm,” she says around her straw, then her eyes are shining when she looks at him. “Yeah. Guys with big egos who don’t do what they say are really just my type.”

Harry rolls his eyes but knows he shouldn’t. He rests his elbow on the back of his chair. 

“I owe you an explanation,” he says, and she’s shaking her head.

“It was like a year and a half ago,” she says. She’s wearing a little ring on her middle finger. It’s pretty. “Sorry I made a shitty comment. We don’t have to go there.”

This conversation is frustrating. “Okay, well, I’m going to tell you anyway, so I hope you’re good with that.” She presses her lips together and then sips her drink to hide her smile. “My sister broke her arm that day and I had to drive out to see her.”

Allie’s features soften, but she doesn’t say anything. She’s just sitting there looking at him, watching him like she’s trying to process this. Again, she wasn’t exactly warm the last time they ran into each other, and he figures it’s because of two summers ago. It makes sense. He’d be pissed, too. He never honestly thought they’d get a chance to talk about it. He’d chalked it up to a miss and bad timing and left it at that, let himself still enjoy the time they had together. Because it was fun. Because he liked it and her. 

Allie’s not saying anything. 

She takes a sip through her straw, then lets out a little frustrated noise, takes it out of her drink and drops it on the bar, raises the glass to her lips and drinks easily a third of it in one go. 

“Okay,” she says, and that’s not really a satisfying answer, but he’s trying not to have too many thoughts about the fact they have all these compounding feelings - at least he does - when they see each other so scarcely and haven’t ever even done anything more than have sex and some conversations. It’s not like they’ve dated, or tried, or even really gotten to know each other better. 

The thing he feels with Allie is something like potential, and it’s scaring the fuck out of him that it doesn’t go away. He’s reminded of it so easily every time this happens. 

And maybe it means something that it happens. 

“I really just thought you weren’t into it,” she says, and then quickly adds, “Me,” with her eyes all soft. 

Harry lets out a little breath, shakes his head, looks right at her. “I was,” he says, because it’s true. “I didn’t just - ” What was it she said? “ - not do what I said I was going to.” 

She says, “Okay,” again, and he sips his drink, resists the urge to down the whole thing and get another. “How’s your girlfriend?”

He scoffs. She’s not being subtle, but he doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. 

“You should ask the guy she cheated on me with.”

Allie freezes, looks him right in the eye and gives him this sympathetic smile like she doesn’t actually want him to have had to go through that, even though she was clearly pissed the last time they saw each other. When she saw him with Anya. He doesn’t know a lot about Allie, in the grand scheme of things, but he definitely thinks she’s the kind of person who just doesn’t want anyone to be hurt.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and then laughs a little and shakes her head. “Let me stop being such a bitch. How are _you_?”

Harry chuckles. “You’re not being a bitch,” he insists. Honestly, he thinks if it went the other way, if she’d stood him up even without being able to help it, he’d probably be pretty bitter about it, too. “I’m...Stressed about school. Having a break and then going home to study.”

“Boring,” she says, and he thinks she’s teasing. But she drains the last of her drink and gestures to the bartender for another round for both of them. If she’s trying to tempt him into blowing off his work, he might just have to let her. “I schedule myself one night off a week from studying, and that jerk almost ruined it.”

Harry laughs again. “Are you trying to convince me to take a break? Or to make sure your evening isn't a waste?”

Allie grins at him, pushes his glass into his hand again. “Both?” she suggests. Harry doesn’t hate the look in her eye when he drains his glass and sets it back down on the bar. “I have to be honest about something and then we can move on, but if I don’t say it, I’m going to regret it.”

Harry’s brow furrows. He nods. “Okay.”

“That shit you pulled to try to get my number when she was with you,” she says, and he purses his lips. He figures he has an idea what she’s going to say, but he’s not going to interrupt her. “That was kind of awful and I really didn’t like it.”

He nods. Their drinks arrive, so he thanks the bartender and plays with the glass, swirls the ice around to melt a little. “Yeah. Desperation play. I’m really sorry.”

He means it. He realizes too late he should’ve brought it up before she did, but oh well. They got it out in the open anyway. And he admires her for not being shy or scared to say it and be direct about her feelings and her needs. He’s not surprised, really - in their limited experience talking to one another, they haven’t really held back - but he likes it. Also, frankly, they don’t really have anything to lose. 

“Okay,” she says, nods once like they can put it past them, and then turns, her knee pressing against his under the bar. “The duration of this drink we can talk about school. Tell me what’s stressing you out. After that, we’re not allowed to talk about it.”

Harry laughs, grins at her and sort of wants to reach out and play with her hair. It looks a little crazy from the cold and wind out there. But also he just figures it’s probably as soft as it used to be; he wouldn’t mind confirming. But something about this meeting feels different than the other ones, and the last thing he wants to do is assume she wants him to touch her. No, if she wants that, she’s going to have to be really explicit about it. 

“I think you’re better at compartmentalizing than I am,” he tells her. Allie just smiles and shrugs one shoulder coyly, which is exactly about as much cuteness as he can handle. “What’s it like to not be addled with overwhelming anxiety all the time?”

Something serious flashes across her face, which makes sense. He’s not doing a good job of making anything sound like a joke, is he? 

“I have a schedule,” she says, and it’s like she really wants to share tips with him. He wants to listen. “Like I said - one evening off a week. Every week I plot out how much time I need to work every day in order to get everything done. And yeah, I don’t let myself complain at length without taking action about something I can control.”

Harry smiles. He doesn’t know for sure, obviously, but he’d bet she’s had therapy or counselling. This is some of the structure his therapist has told him he needs. And he’s tried. Sort of. He just has a hard time _stopping_ when he’s supposed to. He can say he just needs to do four hours a day, but he’ll end up doing six. He can say he won’t stay up past 11, but if he can’t wind down, he’ll continue working. He knows that’s just fucking him up further, but it’s what he does. He never said it was good or right or healthy. 

“I basically work until my eyes cross and then go to bed,” he tells her. She lets out a little laugh, but also has this sort of serious look on her face. “It’s just like, not acceptable for me not to be the best.” 

Allie looks at her glass. He notices how pretty her makeup looks. “Is that something someone else has told you, or something you’ve told yourself?”

“I mean, it’s both, right?” he asks, though it’s obviously not a question she can answer or something she can confirm for him. He knows it’s the truth. And he doesn’t know if it started with the pressure he puts on himself, or the pressure he gets from other people. But it barely matters now. “I just have to get through this year, and then the bar.” 

Allie scoffs. “And you think that once you’re out of school, your anxiety’ll die down? You don’t think you’re going to hustle the same way, and just be getting paid for it?”

“I…” He closes his mouth, though, because fuck. She’s absolutely reading him and he knows she’s right. It’s not even like he didn’t know it himself. It’s just that finishing school feels like such a finish line, and maybe he wants to pretend it means the end of all this, too. “Well, what about you?”

Yeah, he doesn't want to talk about him anymore. He’s absolutely deflecting, and the look on Allie’s face lets him know she can tell, but she’s going to let him do it anyway. 

“Obviously, I give myself the illusion I have control of everything. Which works, most of the time. Until something goes really sideways. Then it’s just really hard to deal with. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen so often.” Harry nods, gives her a little smile. She picks at a bubble in the varnish on the bartop. “You wanna know the really terrifying thing?”

Harry says, “Tell me,” because he thinks she needs him to sound interested, or she’ll lose her nerve. 

She looks up a little, her face still tilted downwards toward the bar, her eyes looking darker than usual in the dim lighting in this place. “All this time I thought I wanted to teach,” she says, and then lets out this bitter laugh and shakes her head. “But lately, I think teaching makes me fucking miserable.” He doesn’t mean to let out a laugh. And it’s not like, from humour. It’s something else. “And so I’ve spent all this time - literal _years_ \- working towards a thing that maybe makes no sense for me, and now I’ve got to either commit to it anyway, or figure out what else to do.”

He just nods, and she sips her drink - she hasn’t ditched the straw in this one - and then she looks at him like she really wants him to say something. He hopes she’s not looking for perfect, because he’s really not sure how to respond to this.

“You seem pretty brilliant,” he tells her, and she looks like she wants to smile. “I have a feeling you could do anything you wanted. And if there wasn’t a direct path, you’d make one.”

He watches her press her lips together like she doesn’t want him to see her true reaction. He sees it anyway. Harry wonders if he'll ever look at this woman and not want to kiss her. He wonders if that’s normal. He wonders if she’d be bothered if he said it out loud at some point this evening. 

She sips the last of her drink through her straw and sets her empty glass on the bar. 

“Enough of that,” she says, then straightens her posture, pulls her shoulders back. She looks pointedly at his drink and he asks if she’s trying to get him drunk. “No. We can stop if you want to.”

He shrugs a shoulder. He can handle a few beverages. He thinks what he’s really feeling is that he wants to be alone with her. But he isn’t going to push that. 

And god, he has a flashback to being 20 on the back porch of that house with her, and her saying something about being cute when she’s drinking. She’s definitely always cute, but this, her with her cheeks a little pink and her body angled towards his a little more now than when she first sat down… Then, god, she lets out this little laugh when he downs the rest of his drink, and she’s seriously fucking adorable. 

“Definitely a cute drunk,” he says, eyes cast her way to see her reaction. She seems to almost freeze, shakes her head a little, and then she’s sounding all sweet when she asks the bartender for another round. Harry likes her voice. Likes how nice she is to everyone. God, even when she’d met Anya, she hadn’t been anything less than polite. 

“I’m not drunk,” she tells him, and it’s enough to startle a laugh out of him. “It takes more than two drinks.”

“You just ordered your third.” 

“Okay, so it takes more than three,” she says, laughing, and Harry just...He really has to wonder where this is going. It’s getting later and later, and he doesn’t mind at all whiling away the time with her. He thinks her one night a week break thing makes a lot of sense, and he knows that opinion is influenced by the fact that he’s spontaneously spending his sitting here with her. 

“What are we doing?” he asks, and she sighs like she was hoping he wouldn’t say anything. “I feel like I should get your number before someone pulls the fire alarm and we have to split, or something.” 

She glances at him, little smile playing on her lips. “You asking me?”

Harry doesn’t bother trying to hide how pleased he is, just pulls his phone from his pocket and opens a new contact, keys in her name. She takes it from him, adds her number. It’s a bit of a trip, honestly. It’s been so long since they met that first time, and… No, he isn’t going to let himself think anything crazy, like maybe they could’ve been something all along if they hadn’t just treated that first night like a one time thing. Because that’s not fair. It was only meant to be a one time thing. And that was fine. It wasn’t until after their second meeting that he felt it should be more, that there must’ve been a reason for them running into each other again. Maybe this is some ‘fourth time’s a charm’ shit, but he just can’t really shake the feeling that there’s some bigger reason why they keep meeting like this. 

After their drinks arrive, Allie says, “I’m not going to sleep with you tonight,” just as he’s taking a sip. He sputters a little, coughs and she looks apologetic. He just stares at her. Had he said anything about them having sex? Jesus. “I’m just saying. Putting it out there.”

He’s got questions. Mostly - why did she think that he wanted to? 

(He _does_ , but that isn’t the point.) 

He just says, “Okay,” and then her eyes get all soft like she’s really, really happy with that answer. She looks like she wants to ask him if he’s sure, but that’s… “I barely know you. What makes you think I wanna take you to bed, anyway?”

He’s teasing. She laughs. He likes it a lot, this stupid back and forth. He glances at his drink and she sets her hand on his back, which is a little confusing when coupled with what she just said. But. She can do what she wants. He doesn’t mind her touching him. He doesn’t mind her not wanting to sleep with him. He likes talking to her. 

Over this drink, they talk about Becca moving, and Allie’s family, and how she’s anxious for the holiday break because what she’s learning as an adult is that her parents don’t actually really understand her at all. He talks about how the holidays are depressing at his house since his dad died. She looks at him with surprise all over her face when he mentions that. He tells her about it, the whole sad story. He gets into it about his family before his dad passed, too. How his parents clearly never should’ve gotten married and he can remember being literally six years old and asking his mom why they couldn’t leave. Not that his dad was abusive, or anything. He just...He drank too much, and he thought more highly of himself than anyone else did. He treated Harry’s mom like she wasn’t capable of doing anything on her own. And he did all this while fucking around on her. When Harry was nine or whatever, they decided that if they were going to be together, they should at least try to be happy. Did couples counseling and all that. And then his sister was born and Harry thinks all three of them could just focus on the baby and ignore the bullshit. 

Anyway, when his dad died, it was sad and it fucked Harry up - is still fucking him up - but it’s not like it took him from a perfect home life to something that was broken beyond repair. 

Allie’s just leaning her elbow on the bar, her chin on her hand, listening. She’s good at making him feel calm. It’s not like he’s never told anyone any of this before, or whatever. He’s pretty open about it with the people he’s close to. He’s just not close to that many people. He’s sure as hell not close with Allie, but it feels easy to tell her everything. 

She drains her drink, pushes his up towards his mouth, which makes him laugh. 

“Next drink, lighter topics,” she insists, but it’s sweet, too, like she knows it was maybe heavy to bring that all up with her, and she doesn’t want them to leave it on this note. 

She gets up to go to the washroom, so Harry orders them another round, and he pays, too, while she’s gone. Not because he doesn’t want to continue drinking or hanging out with her, but because he doesn’t want to have to argue with her about the cheque. Maybe she’d just let him cover it without saying anything, but he wants to avoid anything other than that. The easiest way to do so is to take care of it now. 

She sees him putting his wallet away when she’s walking back from the bathroom. She tilts her head like she knows what he’s done, but doesn’t say anything about it. 

“Secret,” she says, climbing back up onto her chair. She sways a little too far to the right, grabs his arm with her left hand and laughs. “I’m drunk.”

Harry lets out a laugh. “Thought you said it took more than three drinks.”

She blinks all slowly, which is hot, and then bites the corner of her bottom lip. “I didn’t want you to know I’m a lightweight.” She laughs at herself, and Harry just smiles, looking at her. She holds up her glass, then taps it against his. “Cheers.” 

If this is their last drink, and if she’s not coming home with him - he’s not even going to ask - he wants them to talk about something less depressing than what they talked about during their last one.

So he asks, “Who was your first boyfriend?” and she lets out a laugh. 

“Will.”

Yeah, that means nothing. “Will?”

She nods. “Will. My best friend. I was 17.” He’s surprised she didn’t have a boyfriend til she was 17, but he’s not going to say that, because even when he’s drinking he can register that it’d make him sound like a dick. “It was a whole thing, though. I was like, in love with him. He didn’t want to be with me. Then he dated this other girl for a few weeks and I guess realized he actually _did_ want to be with me.” 

He shouldn’t say, “Sounds like an asshole,” but he does. Allie smiles too widely and then turns her head like he’s being a jerk. He shrugs. He stands by his words. 

“He’s not, he was just...confused. I think.” She thinks? “What was kind of scary, for me, was that as soon as I had a boyfriend, I was like...that’s it?” Harry looks at her curiously. She shrugs. “It was just like having a best friend I kissed and fooled around with.” 

Harry can’t help smiling. “I mean, that’s basically what relationships are,” he tells her, and she gives him a shitty look. 

“I don’t need you to tell me what relationships are like. I’ve dated people since.” He holds up his hands and she lets out a little laugh, probably at herself for how quickly she got mad there. “I’m not saying it was a let down. I think I just expected more to change.” She pause. “For _me_ to change.” 

He’s just watching her. After a moment he says, “Isn’t it kind of good that you didn’t?”

“Maybe,” she concedes, and then smiles at him, leans a little closer. “Can you tell, or something, that I’m stubborn and don’t do things just to please people?”

Harry barks out a laugh, lifts his brow, and figures he should be honest. “Yes,” he tells her, and she preens a little like she’s proud of it. It’s fucking cute. “Absolutely.”

“And yet here you are, enjoying my amazing company anyway,” she says, lips quirking prettily, then wrapping around her straw as she looks right at him. 

“Yeah.” He smiles, takes a sip of his own drink. “Here I am anyway.” 

She doesn’t look away and he doesn’t intend to, either, and then she sucks in a sharp breath and shakes her head a little at his flirting. Whatever. She’s not telling him to stop, and he’s not going to because this is all harmless. She set a boundary and that’s fine - he’s good with it. He’s playing within the rules, or whatever. He thinks there’s really nothing groundbreaking about him implying that he likes her company even if she isn’t going to fuck him. 

She asks him what kind of boyfriend he was in high school and he tells her the truth, even though it doesn’t paint him in the best light. Whatever. He doesn’t treat people the same way he did when he was 17, which he tells her. She seems to like that, even if she’s also really unsurprised to hear it. 

She taps her phone to check the time when their drinks are gone. It’s nearly 11. Have they really been sitting here together this long? Shit. They’ve both been drinking on empty stomachs, apparently, and yet neither made any move to leave. Harry thinks she likes his company as much as he likes hers. 

When they step outside, it’s a literal, honest to god, blizzard. There’re a couple inches of snow on the ground already, and Allie lets out this little shriek and pulls her scarf up over her nose so just her eyes are shining at him when she turns quickly towards him. The cars on the messy roads are moving slowly, and Harry breathes out a curse and wishes he were wearing better clothes for the walk home. 

Shit. He doesn't even know where she lives. She’s already opening Uber, and he glances over to see that yeah, the prices are astronomical and the wait times match. 

“I’ll call a cab,” she says, and then starts looking up the number. 

Harry sets his hand on her wrist. “Just stay at mine,” he tells her, and yeah, if he hadn’t had that last drink he probably would’ve been able to say that in a way that didn’t sound like an invitation to get naked. “I live close.” She looks confused, and then he realizes she doesn’t know he moved since the first time she went home with him. “No funny business. You can have your own room.” 

She tilts her head, chews her lip like she’s really thinking about it. “It’s crazy out here.”

“Yeah,” he says, a little hopeful. He just kind of hates the thought of her having to travel around the city in this shit. “Yeah. I can make us something to eat. Give you some warm clothes to sleep in.” 

He’s standing right in front of her, and she’s looking up at him like she thinks he’s being sweet, and then she smiles a little, sighs, and nods. “Only ‘cause it’s a blizzard.” 

“Yeah, I know,” he tells her, then grins. “I know you can’t stand the thought of sleeping with me.”

“That’s not what I said,” she says, way too quickly, and he gives her a look like he absolutely walked her into that. She rolls her eyes and pushes her shoulders up against the cold. “How far? I’m fucking freezing.” 

This feels familiar. Harry puts his arm around her shoulder and tucks her up against him. It’s really just a block and a half to his place, this loft he bought with part of his inheritance because he wanted something of his own, not just family shit. And that house was way too big for just him anyway. 

Harry fobs into the building and wipes his feet on the mat, shakes the snow off his jacket. Allie’s smiling at him and then reaches up, pushes her hand through his hair and then ruffles it a little. Snowflakes fall down in front of him and he’s sure his hair’s a mess. Hers is, too. She shakes the ends a little and then they head for the elevator. She’s texting someone. He knows she doesn’t have a roommate - she told him that earlier - and he isn’t going to be nosey and look at her messages, or whatever. 

When he unlocks the door, she walks in and then turns to look at him as the door closes behind them and he locks it. 

“Jesus,” she says, laughs a little, shakes her head and unbuttons her coat. “You know, one of these days I’m going to ask to see your whole real estate portfolio.”

He laughs, takes his coat and boots off. “This is the only one that’s mine.” 

“Mm. Poor you.” Okay, fair. She’s looking around, then asks if he decorated it himself. He did. He had a really clear picture in his mind when he found this place, and he pulled it all together and bought the things he wanted. 

He has some leftover pasta he made the other day in the fridge. Allie leans her hip against the counter sipping from the water glass he passed her, watches as he heats up a bowl for her and presses it into her hand. She lets out a little noise when she takes the first bite, says something about eating carbs before bed being a really poor idea. Harry shrugs one shoulder and keeps eating. It’s definitely better than going to bed with a belly full of gin. 

After they’re done, when she’s placed her bowl in the sink, she looks right at him and says, “I don’t want my own bed.” 

Harry tilts his head, looks at her. He kind of can’t stand how much just her saying that makes him want her. “No?” 

“No,” she says, all quiet. She steps closer. Harry swallows. “It’s cold.”

“Mm.” He looks down at her, smiles a little, reaches up and touches her hair like he’s wanted to do all night. “Right.” 

“I still don’t want to have sex.” Harry’s first thought is that there’s so much they can do without having sex. But he knows she doesn’t mean it like that, so he’s not going to push it. He nods, and Allie smiles up at him. “We can cuddle. And keep talking?”

“You’re not tired?”

She shakes her head. “Not yet.” 

She looks hot as fuck in his clothes, and he isn’t going to tell her that, either. She teases the hell out of him when he gives her a Harvard crewneck, but he doesn’t care in the slightest. There’s a pair of grey sweats, too, with an elastic waist he figures might not fall down off her hips. She slips between his sheets when he’s brushing his teeth, and he leans against the door from the en suite and looks at her, cheeks still tinged pink from the drinks, the name of his school across her chest, and her hair all pulled up on top of her head in a way that’s far sexier than it should be. 

He lights the candles on his bedside table. They smell like lavender because as cliche as it is, it helps him calm down at night. Allie says it’s nice. Then she asks him to tell her something she doesn’t know. The way she says it makes it sound like they’ve known each other for years and are running out of new stories. 

Harry thinks he can almost imagine that being true. 

“I’m really glad you wandered into that bar tonight,” he says, and she moves closer, leans her head against his chest and presses her hand against his ribs over his tee shirt. He inhales.

“Of all the gin joints, right?” 

God, she’s fucking cute. 

“Something like that,” he whispers. She takes a deep breath and he can tell there’s something she’s not saying. “I don’t open up like this with everyone.” 

It’s been on his mind all night. All the times they’ve had together, actually. 

“I didn’t think so.” She’s not being shitty. She really just is stating her feeling - that she got the sense he wasn’t exactly an open book. “Why do you think you open up to me?”

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly, even as he thinks about it. His thumb strokes her shoulder. “I like you.” 

She lets out a little hum, and Harry wants to laugh a little. Despite her saying she’s not tired, she’s clearly exhausted and barely keeping her eyes open. He smiles a little and she leans up, presses her lips to the underside of his jaw. 

“I like you, too.” 

He doesn’t want to ruin it with more words. He falls asleep shortly after her, the room glowing dimly and smelling of lavender and Allie’s perfume. 

She’s gone when he wakes up in the morning. He’s surprised he didn’t wake up when she did. But that much whiskey’ll do that to you. He’s got an annoying little headache and this pang of disappointment in his belly when he turns and realizes he’s alone in bed. 

There’s a note on his pillow, written on a piece of the stationary his grandparents got him for his birthday, for some reason. He’d left it on the coffee table because he didn’t know what to do with it when it arrived last week. 

Allie’s written _’Thank you for last night. I’m keeping your sweater as a souvenir. Call me?’_

He doesn’t know why that’s a question. He’s not even put out by her thieving his favourite sweater. He doesn’t think he’ll soon forget how fucking good it looked on her. Still, the idea of maybe seeing her wearing it again is one that makes him pretty happy.

He waits a day to call her. She busts his chops about it when she answers. Harry’s smiling as he walks across campus in the cold and she’s laughing in his ear. 

… … …

Allie doesn’t actually believe in perfect timing. Maybe it’s because she’s been through enough shit in her life - or been left anxious and waiting for things that may or may not happen - to feel like anything could actually ever happen at the _right_ time. Like, she remembers being a little kid and waiting for her sister to come home from the hospital. She remembers touching her fingertips to Cassandra’s scar when she was sleeping, pulling her hand back as if she’d been burned when she felt the delicate skin, and wondering if it was really all _over_. And then, of course, when it turned out it wasn’t at all over…

Allie’s been waiting for the moment she finds out her sister’s dead since she was something like seven years old, the ticking time bomb in Cassandra’s chest stubbornly never revealing the plan.

Time is time. There’s nothing perfect or imperfect about it. It’s just its own entity entirely, and Allie sort of refuses to let herself think anything different. 

All that to say, there’s something tumbling through her mind about the concept of time and timing with regards to her relationship with Harry. Because ‘relationship’ is absolutely a stretch, but she doesn’t know what else to call it. In the literal sense, it’s a relationship; he’s a person with whom she has a relationship. He’s not a stranger. God, he’s so not a stranger. Weirdly, she thinks she’s shared more with him than she’s shared with anyone other than Becca or Cassandra in years. But it feels like there’s a block, too. Like there’s some hill they’re always walking up and can’t get to the top of. And the crazy thing is she doesn’t know what’s at the top of the hill, but she doesn’t want to stop walking towards it, either. 

God, what the fuck is she even saying? She’s exhausted - she’s literally bone tired and can barely keep her eyes open - but she’s waiting for him to call because he said he would. Because they’ve been doing this thing for a couple months, where they talk on the phone once every week or two, and text sometimes. Sometimes it’s just sending memes back and forth. Sometimes he’s telling her about how stressed he is, and she’s writing back words of encouragement. She sent him a screenshot of one of her students’ essays because it was laughably horrible and she needed to share, even though it was definitely inappropriate to do so. 

And when they talk, they get into these long conversations about life and their upbringings and their families and friends. She tells him about Cassandra, and he tells her about his anxiety. She tells him about the one panic attack she ever had, after he tells her he was only 13 when he was diagnosed with this thing he tries to downplay. 

And it’s not even all heavy - thank god. She needs some levity from her friendships. She _really_ needs it. If everything were heavy all the time, she sort of wouldn’t be able to deal with it. The limited time she gives herself to talk to or hang out with friends, she wants it to be a little lighthearted, too. A few weeks ago when she’d answered her phone, she’d said, “I’m wearing your sweater,” and he’d hummed and said, “And what else?” He’d made fun of her for ordering Chipotle for dinner two nights in a row, and then sent her a picture of his burrito bowl the following evening, telling her she was a bad influence. 

The thoughts around timing aren’t even in her mind right now because she wants to _sleep_ , but he’d texted her he was just walking home from the library. No, the thoughts around timing have to do with the fact that they haven’t seen each other in person since that night of drinking a little too much and then falling asleep in his bed. Because they’re both doing the ‘one night off a week’ thing, and the thing with that is it leaves such limited time for social interactions that it forces her to schedule her friends in, and she usually ends up doing small group hangouts; all her other social interactions are study sessions one on one, where it’s literally just her and a friend sitting in the library together, both doing their own things but not really talking much after the first half hour. It makes her feel like a shitty friend and always feels like just a perfunctory thing she does so she can say she’s done it and doesn’t drift further away from people. 

She’s literally yawning when Harry’s name comes up on her screen and she swipes her phone open. 

His laugh sounds really good in her ear. 

“Am I keeping you up?” he asks, and it’s teasing, yeah, but she can tell there’s some sincerity there. 

“Yes,” she answers. He lets out this little chuckle and Allie’s mind drifts to lying in his bed with him. Which is a thing that happens often. Because she’s spent more time in a bed with him than she’s spent doing almost anything else with him. 

She doesn’t think she wants to date Harry, but that’s not about _him_. She doesn’t want to date anyone. She can’t possibly imagine juggling a relationship on top of everything else. The thought alone has her stressed. 

“Do you wanna reschedule?”

Honestly, she likes that he’s asking. It makes her smile and turn onto her side, put her phone on speaker and say, “No.” 

Harry laughs quietly, asks her how she’s been. 

He insists he isn’t bothered that she clearly falls asleep talking to him. She wakes up with her phone in front of her and has no recollection of saying goodnight. Their call lasted 20 minutes and then ended, and when she texts him she’s all apologetic. He says it’s fine and says she was all cute and sleepy. Allie feels guilty. Not just for falling asleep, but for...Look, he hasn’t been exactly direct about what he wants from her, but he also is not being subtle in his flirtation or the fact that he’d probably be okay with it if she wanted it, too. And it’s not that she doesn’t _want_ it. She just...She needs to get through this year. Maybe in the summer. But isn’t that fucking ridiculous? Like, should she have to plan potentially getting into a relationship with someone around the academic calendar? And it’s also really wrong and selfish of her to assume that Harry wants the same thing and would even wait for her or still be interested then. 

It’s coincidental that falling asleep on him, realizing that he speaks to her with a kind of adoration that makes her uncomfortable knowing she can’t just _do_ that, and sort of wanting to anyway, all line up with the busiest time of her year. There are papers and midterms and she spends a ridiculous amount of time outside class hours talking to students. Not only does she want them to do well, but it makes a difference for her, too. If she’s a shitty teacher that messes up her prospects, even as she’s trying to figure out if she needs teaching prospects. 

She has a breakdown in March when some of her friends are booking travel for the break and Allie realizes her schedule doesn’t change at all just because classes aren’t in session. She’s got grading and reading to do, along with working on her dissertation. The last straw comes when Becca messages her to invite her to the city. “Just overnight,” Becca says, and Allie feels like she can’t even fucking manage that. Like, she can’t spare a three hour train ride and a night with her best friend. Becca’s trying to convince her she _can_ , but this deep sense of panic sets in when Allie even tries to consider what she has to shuffle around to schedule it. 

She turns off all the notifications on her phone for three days and keeps her head down. When she’s eating a late dinner around 10pm, she finally checks her phone. Harry’s messaged her, is calling her a stranger, saying he hopes she’s well and that she’s keeping her head above water. 

She’s not! She’s very much not. But she sends back the two pink hearts emoji and leaves it at that. Then thinks way too hard about what she might accidentally be communicating with that. 

She doesn’t message him again, and he doesn’t message her. It drags out for a couple weeks before she actually even notices, really. She just takes his sweater out of her drawer and pulls it on when she needs to go for a walk around the neighbourhood to stretch her legs and it’s still cool enough outside to warrant the extra layer. She thinks of him, pulls open her phone, and sees how long it’s been since they messaged or spoke. She’s scared that if she calls him or reaches out, he’ll call her on everything and she’ll have to explain that despite all that shit she said about how good she is at balancing her time, she’s kind of been awful at it. She suspects he knows anyway. But she leaves it alone, really thinking that she doesn’t have it in her to get into all that with him. Which isn’t fair. It’s not, and she knows it. She owes him an explanation she just can’t muster the courage to give him.

In April, her mom seems to be able to sense that something’s up with her and invites her home for the weekend. She literally refuses to take no for an answer. She even insists on coming to pick Allie up, which is...it’s just ridiculous, and it makes her realize how obvious it must be to everyone else that she’s a little buried. 

Her parents just moved last summer from the house Allie grew up in in Stamford to this really tiny town called West Ham halfway between New Haven and Hartford. They bought this gorgeous house with all this land and a treeline and you have to drive to get anywhere truly worth going to - even the town proper. Allie doesn’t hate it. There’s no reason for her to have an opinion on it, really; she doesn’t live here. She’s been exactly four times. Once to help move, then Thanksgiving, Christmas, and now this visit. When she steps into the house, it smells like home and her dad emerges from his home office and looks so happy to see her that it nearly makes her emotional. 

She wakes up early Saturday morning, tugs on her jeans and sweater, pulls her hair up. She pours herself some coffee in one of the kitschy tin mugs her mom got when they moved out here ‘to the country’, and steps outside. She’s walking over to the barn and hears her mom talking in hushed tones to the horses. Allie smiles to herself, feeling calm - that’s the same voice her mom used to use on her and Cassandra. She says good morning, then heads over to the paddock where Maggie, Allie’s favourite horse, is already grazing. She doesn’t enter the paddock, but she stands outside with her coffee and clicks her tongue until the mare heads her way, and Allie strokes her hand down the horse’s muzzle. 

The paddock is close to the road, just a few yards away from the shoulder, so Allie doesn’t think anything of it at all when she hears a car approaching, just continues petting this animal and speaking to her because her mom insists Maggie loves Allie as much as Allie loves Maggie. 

The car slows, and Allie glances over. This slick black car has tinted windows and pulls over, tires crunching on the gravel. Her mom has told her that when the horses are out sometimes people with kids stop to look at them, or whatever. 

This isn’t that. 

Harry gets out of the car, standing there with it and the grass between them, looking at her like he’s not sure if she’s real or he’s imagining her. He closes the door, walks down the ditch and across the grass until he’s standing in front of her. Maggie is wary of the stranger. Allie scratches Maggie’s cheek. 

It’s absolutely insane to her that she hasn’t seen him since December, considering how much they spoke for a while there. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks, which is sort of funny, honestly. Allie laughs. 

“I live here,” she says, and then corrects herself when he looks confused. “My parents do. They moved here because my mom wanted horses.” 

His brow goes up and he looks over at Maggie, then stuffs a hand into his pocket. “Are you serious?” Allie feels her brow furrow. Like, yes? “I grew up in West Ham.” She blinks at him. There’s no way the world is _this fucking small_. “Home for the weekend.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that. She doesn’t have to, because her mom comes out from the barn, looking curiously at them, and then walks over and asks, “Who’s this young man?”

Allie hates that she blushes. If she can read the look on Harry’s face - which she thinks she can - he looks kind of amused by the whole thing. Probably especially by her reaction.

“Mom, this is Harry,” she says, and then looks at him and tries to think of how to describe their relationship. “A friend from Boston.” 

Harry smiles, reaches his hand out. Her mom pulls off her work glove to shake his hand, says, “Nice to meet you, Harry.”

“You too, Mrs. Pressman.” Allie presses her lips together, looks up at him from under her lashes. “I was just telling Allie I actually grew up about 10 minutes from here.” He pauses, glances at Maggie. “Beautiful horses.”

Her mom beams, and Allie wants to call him on sucking up, but she won’t. She feels like a fucking teenager. 

“Come in for coffee,” her mom says, and Allie’s head snaps over to look at her. _What_? “I made fresh cinnamon buns this morning. Allie’s favourite.”

Harry grins, gives Allie a _look_ , says, “I love cinnamon buns.”

He says something about moving the car into the driveway if that’s okay, and then Allie’s walking towards the house with her mom saying something about how handsome he is, and she’s _blushing again_ , and she sort of wants the ground to open and swallow her whole. 

In what world does it make sense that he’s _meeting her family_? God, she’s glad Cassandra isn’t here. She’d eat him alive. 

Harry sitting in the breakfast nook overlooking the backyard, sipping from a cup of coffee and licking icing from his upper lip is almost too much for her to handle. If she thought he was charming with _her_ , she hadn’t seen anything, apparently. She thinks her mom’s swooning. He says he’s just in town to spend some time with his family because he had a couple days break in his study schedule. Then it comes out that he goes to Harvard and studies law, and her mom gives her a pretty loaded look, and Allie knows without a doubt that it’s in response to the fact that she was definitely wearing a Harvard sweater yesterday when she was picked up. She’s really fucking glad she didn’t just pull the same one on this morning. She’d be mortified if he’d pulled up and she was _wearing his clothes_. 

Her dad walks in asking whose Maserati is in the drive, and Allie wants to crawl under the table. 

Her mom, after a while, drags her dad back outside, saying something about barn chores, and Allie’s left alone in her parents’ fucking kitchen with Harry’s knee pressing against hers and this really adorable but also infuriating look on his face. He goes one further and leans his forearm across the table, pushes his hair back with his other hand. Allie just has to sit here and wait to hear what he’s going to say. 

“They’re great,” he tells her, and like, they’re her parents. She knows. 

“I know.” She takes a deep breath. “Should we just talk about how we haven’t spoken in ages?” She says it on a sigh, because she doesn’t really _want_ to, but she also can’t stand the thought of just sitting here ignoring it, either. Harry blinks slowly like he was sort of enjoying pretending it wasn’t happening. “Why are you looking at me like that?” 

He shrugs. “It’s cute,” he says, and that makes no sense as an answer. “Last time, I was freaking out and you calmed me down. This time…”

His voice trails, and she doesn’t appreciate where he’s going with this. 

“I’m not freaking out.”

“Mhm.” Yeah, he could stop _smirking_. He stares at her, and she refuses to look away first, but then she _does_ , because she also refuses to just sit there staring into his fucking eyes like that. “What happened?” he asks gently, and okay, this is something she can handle. 

She takes a deep breath, shakes her head a little. “I got snowed under,” she tells him, and it’s not a lie. “Everything got insane. I’m a shitty friend.”

Harry smiles a little, gently, like there’s maybe something he wants to say to that. Something about their friendship, or whatever. 

“I don’t think you are,” he tells her, and then he’s looking at her like it’s not up for debate. “I think you just want to be as good at being friends as you are at everything else.” She doesn’t know what to say to that, because he’s right. “You wanna know the crazy thing?”

She doesn’t.

“Yeah.”

Fuck. 

Harry slides his fingertips over the back of her hand, smiles at little as he watches, then glances at her from under his lashes. “I don’t think I was really trying to be your friend.”

She’s trying really hard not to panic. This is what she was afraid of. She can’t juggle the back half of her semester and a new relationship. There’s no way. She’s distracted just sitting here next to him with his stupid beautiful face pointed in her direction. Trying to focus on school work and knowing there’s absolutely a better offer...God, she thinks the only reason it didn’t happen earlier this year is that the first couple times they couldn’t sort their schedules, they stopped trying. They just stuck to phone and FaceTime and messages. 

She wants to pull her hand away, but she also really doesn’t want to pull her hand away. Which is the entire fucking problem. 

Maybe they should’ve just slept together that night. Yeah, if they’d just done that, she’d be able to say that it’s just sex. That it was always just about sex. But she can’t even pretend right now that it’s that. She likes him. She knows he likes her. 

(The thing about not thinking there’s such a thing as perfect timing, is it makes her wonder if there’s no such thing as bad timing, either.)

She says, “Harry,” softly, and he sighs, pulls his hand away. 

“Right.” 

“No, stop. I’m processing.” He keeps his eyes down, but he’s smiling a little. She wants him to touch her again. She puts her hand on his thigh, leans forward so he’ll look at her, which he does, and she almost regrets, because she thinks he looks a bit sad and she thinks she’d do almost fucking anything to make him stop. “I wear your sweater all the time.”

He gives her a lopsided grin. “Yeah?”

She smiles back. “It’s upstairs.” Yes, she’s stalling. She appreciates that he’s not calling her on it. “I just don’t know what to do with you.”

His brow goes up, and then he looks like he wants to say something flirty. She’d probably like it. She’d definitely like it. She likes the way his thigh feels, warm under her palm through the fabric of his jeans. She honestly thinks that if she wasn’t at her parents’ place right now, she’d take him to her bedroom. Not that it’d solve anything, but she wants it. Wants him. Thinks part of this mini-break that’s meant to help relieve some of her stress could benefit from how good she knows he can make her feel. 

“I liked it when we were talking,” she tells him. “It made me feel less alone.”

He looks a little put off by it. She doesn’t know why. “Well, do you want me, or do you want someone to keep you company?” 

_Oh_.

She doesn’t know how to answer that question.

“What do you want?” she asks instead of answering. Harry sighs like that isn’t really good enough. 

But he still says, “I want you,” like it’s the easiest thing in the world. 

She knows she’s sending mixed signals, and that kissing him isn’t going to help whatsoever. But she does it anyway, just leans over and puts her hand on his face and presses her lips against his. 

When she pulls away, she knows she has fucked up. She shouldn’t have done that. He looks too hopeful, reaches over to push her hair back. She doesn't lean away, though she should do that, too. 

“I just can’t right now,” she tells him, and he tilts his head slowly, his hand dropping away. He looks...Honestly, he looks like he wants to fight her on it but knows it’s no use. He looks like he thinks she’s scared - and he’d be right about that, too - and yeah, like he’s sort of annoyed she’s saying this after kissing him like that. 

His jaw tenses, and then he says, “If you always look for reasons not to, you’ll find them.” It sounds like something a therapist would say. She’s absolutely not going to throw that in his face. “But I get it.” 

He slides away from her on this stupid bench, stands up, and she realizes she doesn’t want him to _go_ , either.

“Harry.” 

He throws on a smile, shakes his head. He reaches for his coffee cup, drains the last of it, then slips his hand into his pocket. “It’s okay.”

She wonders how it’s possible that she feels like she’s made a mistake, but also feel like there’s no way she can give him what he wants? It’s selfish, right? She wants the best of everything. If she’s being honest, she wants him to wait around and stay interested until she has time to throw into a relationship. It’s not fair to say that out loud. It’s not fair to ask it of him.

She thinks he might say yes. 

She looks up at him, then doesn’t like the dynamic of their positions, so she stands up, too. “Do you want your sweater back?”

He lets out a breathy laugh, shakes his head. “Keep it.” He smiles sadly, puts his hand on her shoulder and leans over to kiss her cheek. “It’s okay,” he repeats. “Stop beating yourself up about this.” 

It’ll take more than that to get her to stop, but she nods anyway, and he’s so fucking handsome when he has that soft look on his face. 

“I’ll walk you out,” she says. They head for the door, and when they get outside, she can hear her parents laughing in the barn. She thinks about that night at the bar with Harry. And god, that morning at the beach, and that night at his place, too, and she just… She likes laughing with him. She liked it. She’ll miss it. “I’ll see you.”

He gives her this truly gorgeous look, pulls his keys from his pocket. “Probably,” he says, and Allie doesn't want to think about fate, or luck, or timing, or chance, or any of that shit. 

But when she’s watching him back out of the driveway, all she’s thinking about is whether there’s something bigger at play here. If there’s a reason they keep seeing each other and a reason it never really feels quite _right_ , but definitely never feels wrong, either. 

She doesn’t message him again. 

He doesn’t message her, either. 

… … …

Contrary to what everyone at his firm seems to believe about him, he’s not the kind of guy who needs his own office. After just a year and a few months, though, he’s rewarded with one, along with a promotion and more money and a bonus structure he barely has to negotiate for. Honestly, he was hired on his merits, part of a small class of associates who were brought in all at the same time. By small, he means three. There were two people, and him. And one of those people was the niece of one of the senior partners. Harry knows he didn’t just coast in on family connections. He worked his ass off to get hired, and he worked his ass off for over a year to get here. There was one spot available and he knew if he didn’t want Elizabeth to get it by default, he’d have to make it impossible for them to ignore him. It’s not really a surprise that he earned it. Not to him. Once he decided he wanted it, losing wasn’t an option. That’s the very attitude his bosses admired in him enough to offer it to him. Because it isn’t just something he applies when it benefits him directly; it’s how he approaches the work with his clients, too. 

He celebrates with his colleagues at happy hour at this place nearby, this bar they usually go to where - fucking cliché as it is - the servers know all their names. He tries to stick to one drink, but people keep buying them for him. He thinks it’s a little fucked up that they’re not listening to him. Whatever; he doesn’t have to drink them all and it’s their money to waste. And most of them absolutely have the money to waste, so he doesn’t feel bad about it. 

He still ends up with a good buzz, and by the time they’re leaving it’s dark out and he wants to grab an Uber before his boss convinces them all to go to another bar because he doesn’t want to go home to his wife yet. Harry’s hungry, wants to go home where it’s warm and he can sit on his sofa and eat by himself. He doesn’t dislike his colleagues and he definitely knows how to play the game, but it’s a little exhausting, too. 

He’s got his head down, his eyes on his phone, when Faulkner (and yes, that’s this guy’s first name) claps him on the shoulder and points across the street. Faulkner’s gross, so Harry isn’t surprised when he sees that the guy’s pointing to a woman in a long black wool coat and pink scarf, and…

Oh, _shit_.

“Allie!” he calls out before he can stop himself. She turns her head, stops, gives a fucking blinding smile, and puts her hand on her hip. Harry says goodbye to everyone and then crosses the street quickly, holding out his hand when a cab honks at him. “Allie.” 

She looks up at him, her cheeks pink, this lipstick she’s wearing making her look…

Yeah, he definitely can’t be thinking about that right now. 

“Hi,” she says, and then seems to be able to clock his sobriety level. “What’s the occasion?”

“Got promoted.” He wants to hug her, so when she laughs and says congratulations, he wraps one arm around her shoulder to pull her in, and her arms go around him pretty easily. “How are you?”

“Good,” she says, a little breathless, and then she’s tucking her hair behind her ear when she pulls away. “Good. I’m working at this consultancy.”

He smiles. He remembers her freaking out when she decided after Christmas that year they were talking that she definitely didn’t want to teach. “Good for you.” 

“Yeah,” she says quietly, smiles up at him, then pushes her scarf up over her chin. “You look really good, Harry.” 

Look, if he knew what it was about this woman that always makes him feel like he’s won the fucking lottery when she compliments him or lets on at all that she thinks he’s attractive…

What’s he talking about? 

“So do you,” he says, and flashes her a smile he thinks might make her want to keep talking to him. Might make her want to talk to him somewhere that isn’t here. “Kind of incredible, actually.”

Because he wants to make it clear, you know? 

“Harry, you…”

He reaches up to set his hand on her waist, grins down at her. “Yeah?”

She looks...He doesn’t like this look. “I’m engaged.”

_What_?

He takes a full step back, watches her face. He blinks, and she’s just staring at him like she doesn’t know what he’ll think. And it’s fucked for him to have any thoughts at all whatsoever, because they haven’t seen one another in a couple years now. He has no business being bothered by this. They were never even together at all. 

But here he is, anyway, feeling somehow like he’s lost something. 

He asks, “What?” and then realizes that’s stupid, and throws on a smile he doesn’t mean in the slightest, and says, “Wow. Congratulations.”

She looks too soft. Too pretty. Too much like she can tell exactly what he’s thinking even though it’s been too long and he really wants to pretend she doesn’t know him at all.

“Thanks.”

It hits him, even through the several glasses of expensive scotch muddling his thoughts, that the thing he’s feeling is jealousy coupled with an almost staggering sense of disappointment. It’s incredibly fucked up, and definitely not fair, but the thing going through his mind is that…

Look, he just thought that if she was ready for a relationship, she might’ve given him a call. 

And it’s stupid, right? Because it’s been long enough that there’s no way in hell he should’ve assumed that she was still buried under school. Especially since he knows when she was due to finish. He definitely wasn’t keeping in touch with her, either. And he wasn’t single or waiting around or lonely the whole time. 

But he didn’t get fucking engaged, either. 

And because he’s a competitive asshole and has never been able to back away from a chance to make himself feel better about a situation, by any means necessary, he looks down at her hand and says, “Let’s see it.” 

Allie tugs off her black knit mitten and holds up her hand. He takes it, holds her fingers delicately in his, rubs his thumb over her knuckles, then pushes at the diamond ring with it. He’s staring. The ring is...it’s fine. Cute. But he’s not going to say that because it’s insulting as fuck and he’s not a dick. It’s just this small-ish round diamond set in white gold or platinum - he can’t tell - with a few little diamonds down the band. He glances up at her face and she’s just watching him like she _wants_ to know what he thinks. Like it matters. 

“Pretty,” he says, because he figures that’s safe. Allie gently pulls her hand back, slips her mitten back on. He hates that he thinks there’s something adorable about that. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

He shouldn’t have asked that. He doesn’t want to know. He cares - it’s not that he doesn’t care - it’s just that it doesn’t matter, does it? What does he hope to get out of asking this question and having her tell him about this guy who’s convinced her to marry him? Jesus, let him stop. That’s not fair. No one’s convinced her. She’s fallen in love with someone enough to want to spend her life with him. 

“His name’s Tyler. He’s a musician.”

Ah. Explains the ring.

(Okay, he’s sort of a dick.)

“He any good?” he asks, and he should really just excuse himself from this conversation and go the fuck home. 

“Yeah,” she says, sounding a little irritated. She tilts her chin up, defiant. “You want the link to his Spotify page?”

Harry presses his tongue against his cheek, thinks of a witty retort and then decides to keep it to himself. Getting into this banter with her will only serve to remind him that it doesn’t feel like this with anyone else.

Fuck. It only feels like this with her. 

So he says, “Congratulations,” again, and Allie’s eyes go a little soft, like she recognizes what it means that he’s backing down like this, too. Like she can read his fucking mind, or something. He steps closer and she doesn’t step back, so he sets his hand on her cheek and leans in to press his lips gently against her forehead. “Take care.” 

She almost looks like there’s a tear in her eye when she pulls away. Maybe not a tear, but _something_ , but he stops himself from thinking about it at all, because it doesn’t fucking matter. 

“You too,” she says, and then reaches up, puts _her_ mitten-clad hand against _his_ cheek and gives him this genuine smile that sort of fucks him up. He looks down so he can stop seeing it, and so she won’t see his smile, too, and her thumb brushes against his skin before she pulls it away. 

Harry takes a breath, nods gently, and steps around her so he can walk away. 

He thinks Allie’s been featured to varying degrees in his thoughts since the first time he saw her standing on that porch all by herself checking her email at a party. He wonders how he’s going to teach himself to not think about her. 

… … …

Allie has truly not ever thought of herself as a heartbreaker. Becca says something that sounds shitty about her never having had many opportunities. Something about Allie hanging onto relationships too long until she’s the one getting her heart broken, instead of ending them when things started feeling not great. In response, Allie had offered a weak, slightly drunk, “Fuck you,” which she apologized for immediately and never actually meant. Becca’s a good and understanding friend and gives Allie some leeway on her emotional reactions because, you know, recently-broken engagement, and all that. 

She is very, very much ignoring the timing and coincidence of the moment things with Tyler started feeling a little wrong. She has to ignore it. It’s...it’s irrelevant. The timing is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that Tyler made her feel weird and guilty about her salary in comparison to his. He actually had her apologizing to him and then crying alone in the living room of their apartment - her apartment; it’s _hers_ \- while he slept in bed unaware. She worked her ass off to get where she is. She isn’t even making an astronomical amount of money right now, though she knows her earning potential is always going to be higher than his. They’ve known that all along. At least she has. If he was ignoring it, that’s on him. She’s still mad at herself for _apologizing_ for it.

Look, she did _years_ of school, and he did a one-year sound engineering program so he could have a ‘fall back’ or whatever if his playing career didn’t work out. And he’s good, okay? He’s good, and he does alright with his little YouTube channel, and local people come see him at the bars he plays at. 

But he’s weird about the fact that they don’t split things equally, and when he suggested they set up a joint account, her first instinct was to say no. Then he got all shitty about her having more money, and asking why it wasn’t theirs, and she’d replied, “Because I’m the one earning it,” which he didn’t like. 

They, apparently, should’ve talked about finances before he put a ring on her finger. And they did, a little. And Allie feels like a fucking idiot for not seeing the indicators then that this would be an issue. 

Allie ends up in Cambridge, sitting on the sidewalk outside this apartment complex, and she’s already scrolled through the contact list on the stupid, fancy screen in the vestibule to confirm that Harry does, in fact, still live here. He didn't answer when she buzzed. She’s sitting here with a salad she grabbed on her way here from work, and a bottle of white wine with a twist off cap that she keeps taking swigs from.

When it starts to rain, she just laughs. Perfect. 

It’s been two weeks since she ended it with Tyler. He’s moving out today. She’s super fucking annoyed that he’s spent two entire weeks sleeping on the couch, dragging his heels on actually finding a new place, and begging her any chance he has when they’re both home to change her mind. 

It’s been three months since she ran into Harry on the street and he’d called her ring pretty like he could’ve done better. 

It’s been fucking her up since. 

Dammit. She’s not supposed to be thinking of the timing.

She should also not be thinking too hard about the fact that she’s literally checking her email on her phone when Harry rounds the hedge and starts up the walkway, sees her sitting there, and sighs. He looks fucking incredible in his suit, his fancy umbrella held over his head and his keys in his hand. 

“Hi, Allie,” he says, and it’s almost like he can tell why she’s here, which is annoying, but shouldn’t be. “Why are you sitting out here in the rain?”

How in the hell is he just talking to her like they’re old friends and keep in touch and no time has passed? Why is it so _easy_ with him when everything else feels so fucking hard? 

(Why did it feel so hard with _him_ when they were _trying_? Why couldn’t it have felt like this? Was that her fault?) 

He eyes the wine bottle she’s clearly opened and taken a few sips from. She’s not even drunk in the slightest, has had less than a ‘glass’ sitting here feeling sorry for herself and trying to understand what the fuck she’s even doing here.

The fact that he’s asking why she’s in the rain and not why she’s here at all feels poignant. 

It’s possible she’s too emotional for this. 

He reaches for her hand to help her up, though she clearly doesn’t need it. She puts her hand in his anyway. That feels poignant, too. 

He lets them into the building and she walks in ahead of him, heads for the elevator. He stops at the concierge desk to get a package, then joins her, looks up at the number on the display. He’s not saying anything. It’s weird. 

Shit, she’s not saying anything, either. 

“How are you?” she asks, and pushes her wet hair off her face with her hand. Harry looks over at her, then his eyes are on her hand, and _right_ , he’s probably noticing that she isn’t wearing a ring. Her ring. The ring. 

She isn’t going to say anything. The elevator door opens and she walks in first, then he says, “I’m well,” and presses the button for his floor, looks over at her pointedly. “How are you?”

She doesn’t like how delicate it sounds, how he’s clearly thinking she’s coming straight from breaking it off, or something. 

“I’m fine,” she says. 

Harry lets out a little laugh and quirks his brow. “Yeah?” His eyes flick down to the wine bottle in her hand. “You sure about that?”

She gives him the cute smile she knows for a fact he likes, and asks, “Can’t I just stop by to see an old friend unannounced?” and Harry huffs out a laugh, then gestures for her to step off the elevator. “I couldn't very well show up empty-handed.”

“Right.” She hears his keys jingle, looks over her shoulder just in time to see him checking her out. _That_ feels good. He doesn’t even look any type of way over being caught doing it. “Good thing you have a bottle you’ve clearly been drinking directly from. Otherwise I might not’ve let you in.”

“See? I knew it.” 

He laughs again, toes off his shoes and Allie stands right in front of him, close enough that she sort of wants to touch him. She sets down her bag and grips the wine bottle and god, it feels like she’s daring him to lean down and kiss her. But he doesn’t. He just looks at her all softly like he’s happy to see her but isn’t willing to make any sudden movements. 

She turns away before she can do something stupid like throw herself at him. That’s definitely not why she’s here. Not that she knows why yet. But it’s not _that_.

She walks over and perches herself on one of the fancy stools at his counter, and he shrugs off his suit jacket, loosens his tie and rolls up his sleeves. She feels warm as she watches him, so she untwists the cap off the bottle and takes a sip. He laughs at her again. 

“Can I at least get you a glass?” he asks, grinning, and she shakes her head, but he pulls one down from the cupboard and slides it towards her anyway. He turns back for another, but then raises a brow and looks at her. “Are you sharing?”

She shrugs one shoulder coyly, pours for herself. “I suppose.” 

He slides another glass across the counter she thinks he’s deliberately keeping between them, so she pours for him, too. And then she presses their glasses together and they both take sips and he’s not looking at her, but she’s looking at him. If it’s at all possible, she thinks he’s gotten more attractive every time she’s seen him since she was 19. God, he’s really just beautiful and she likes looking at him. She likes it so much. 

He asks, “What happened?” instead of asking her what she’s doing here, with him, and she just honestly thinks she might love him a little for that. 

Allie shrugs, and says, “There was something big we couldn’t agree on.”

“Oh yeah?” he asks, and then takes another drink, makes a face, and Allie wants to laugh, honestly, at the way he looks at the glass as if it, itself, will be able to betray or explain the bad taste. She didn’t pick well. 

Bit of a theme lately. 

“Yeah.”

Harry leans his elbows on the counter, then stands upright again, slips his index finger into the knot of his tie and gets it undone, unbuttons his shirt collar. Fuck. 

“What was the big thing?”

Allie glances up at him, tries not to be distracted, tries not to _want him_. God, it’s not fair of her to show up like this and want him. Not after how she left things last time. Or the time before. Especially the time before. 

She just says, “Money,” and Harry absolutely _grins_ like he’s been there before, or something, and understands. And maybe he has. “How much I make and how little he makes. It’s complicated.”

Harry scoffs. “Doesn’t sound complicated,” he says, and he’s maybe truly, really, very much actually the first and only person who’s been on her side without needing convincing. 

And some of that is just patriarchy or whatever; like, she doesn’t blame her mom for wanting her to try harder, to placate Tyler, or whatever. Like, that’s just the way the world works, right? The way her mom’s world works. Men are the way they are and you just have to work with it. 

Fuck that. 

Cassandra spewed some shit about this being the ultimate feminist relationship, or whatever, where Allie could draw a line and a boundary about her money versus his. Allie, herself, thinks she shouldn’t have to fucking do that, and doesn’t want to be with someone to whom she has to explain these basic things. (And, frankly, who reacts as poorly as Tyler did when she said so.) Becca just wants someone to make Allie happy, and Tyler was good at that for a bit. Quite good at it. Until he wasn’t. 

She doesn’t feel bad about the breakup. Not really. She feels like she’s doing the right thing. Harry making it sound simple is really in line with how she’s been processing it, and she just...She honestly…

She’s not drunk enough (or drunk at all) to think maybe she just should’ve been with Harry since that first night they met. But she’s doing it anyway. 

She realizes she’s in her own head at exactly the moment his brows sort of go up and he gives her this soft look like he wants to know what she’s thinking. 

“I was thinking about us today,” she says, and Harry smiles too widely, then hides it, looks down, and she knows she can’t just sleep with him or start something with him tonight or any night soon. 

(She thinks if she turns it over in her mind enough, she can absolutely conclude that they started something _years_ ago that they never actually stopped or ended or finished.) 

“Were you?” 

Allie hums, thinks he looks sort of devastating when he glances back up at her. He’s got his hair cut shorter than he used to wear it. She likes it, thinks it’s handsome, but she liked it longer, too. And then there’s the gentle look on his face like he really wants to know what she was thinking, but doesn’t want to have to ask her to keep talking. 

“Becca said something about how she’s the only one who gets me.” She bites her bottom lip, shrugs again. “For some reason, I thought of you.”

He grins at her, then rubs a hand along his jaw, sighs. “You think I get you?”

She does not want to back down now. 

“Yes,” she says, and Harry smiles at her, then rounds the counter. She thinks he’s going to sit next to her, to touch her, but he just moves down the hall, comes back seconds later with a fluffy white towel. 

“You want something else to wear?” he asks, and then gives her a look. “Something else to steal?” 

Allie laughs, which surprises her. She dries the ends of her hair with the towel, though she’s not really that wet; it’s mostly her clothes, and she would like something dry. Harry jerks his head towards his bedroom. She follows him down the hall and yeah, it still looks the same in here. She likes it so much. It feels like him. 

This time, he reaches for a dress shirt, this light grey thing with pearly buttons, and she knows the look she gives him is too dark. He just grins back at her when she takes it from him, too stubborn and honestly too comfortable with him to think there’s anything wrong with her wearing one of his shirts and nothing more if that’s what ends up happening. She starts unbuttoning this green blouse she’s wearing - the one she wore to work - and Harry’s watching her as he undoes his buttons, too. 

Fuck. 

She turns around when she slips it down off her shoulders, ignores the fuck out of the low chuckle he lets out. It’s almost like he’s impressed she’s gone and done it. She’s left in a purple bra and her black pants, and pulls his shirt on, buttons it mostly before turning around. Harry’s tugging a navy blue tee shirt on, and then his hand reaches for the button of his pants and Allie feels her face flush. He grins at her like he thinks she’s cute, or something, and then steps further into his walk in closet, out of her sight. She pushes her pants down off her hips and takes her clothes with her when she leaves his bedroom - because she needs to leave his bedroom, honestly - and drapes them over those stools, grabs her wine glass and makes her way to his sofa, crosses her legs. She’s cold, but doesn’t spot anything to cover her. 

When he comes to join her, he’s got a very soft looking blanket over his arm, drapes it over her, and then gets his glass and sits down on one of the chairs. She wonders if it’s because he wants to keep space between them. She wonders, for the first time, if maybe he isn’t single. Why wouldn’t that thought have entered her mind until now?

God, no. No, he must be single. They just more or less undressed in front of one another. She doesn’t take him for the type to do that shit if he has a girlfriend. 

“He’s moving out,” she says, and realizes that provides very little context. Most couples who break up don’t continue living together. “Like, right now.”

Harry purses his lips like some of the puzzle pieces coming together. “Ah.” She doesn’t like that. “And you didn’t want to be there to watch him leave?”

She pulls a face as if to ask if he’s lost it. Is he not hearing her?

“I don’t give a fuck,” she says stubbornly. Harry’s jaw twitches as he tries not to smile. “He asked me not to be.”

“When did this all happen?” he asks, eyes narrowed like he’s been trying to figure out without asking, but hasn’t been able to. “You seem pretty over it.”

“A couple weeks ago, officially. There were a few weeks of arguments, though. I _am_ pretty over it,” she confirms. Harry nods slowly, understanding. “This shirt smells like you.”

He smiles at her from where he sits, then leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “I thought you might like that.”

_Fuck_. Why is he so goddamn...like this?

“Do you ever think…” she starts, then stops herself, until he looks up at her from under his lashes like he knows what she was going to say. Like he wants her to, even. “About us?”

He grins again, does something with his tongue that she absolutely cannot let herself pay too much mind to, and then leans back in his chair, crosses one leg over the other so his ankle is resting on his knee. 

And he says, “All the time,” and it’s sincere, and she believes him, and she _wanted_ him to say that. She did. She wanted it so much. “I kind of feel like an asshole now for wishing this would happen.”

It makes Allie blush. 

No one’s ever wished for her. 

God, she’s being fucking stupid. 

“You wished for it?” she asks, and like...It’s just that she’s been thinking of him, and he’s been thinking of her. It’s not new, probably. No, it’s probably not new.

Every time she’s thought of the look on his face when she told him on that sidewalk in February, the way he’d taken a step back like he couldn’t be that close to her if he couldn’t have her, it’s scared her how much she’s been willing to do or say to make him not look at her like that again.

Maybe her fight with Tyler was about money, but she’s really lying to herself if she thinks that’s all it was. She can’t say that to anyone else. She isn’t even sure she can say it to Harry. But she knows the truth. 

Part of her - at least a little bit of her - was always here, with Harry, in his shirt, with him looking at her like he’s always wanted her as badly as he did that night on the sidewalk. Like he’s always wanted her the way he did in her parents’ kitchen. The way he’s always wanted her, but respected her enough not to push. 

He should’ve pushed.

He takes a deep breath, hangs his head a moment, then looks right at her. 

“I was going to call you,” he says, and she can tell he’s being honest, telling her something real that’s been on his mind. “Tell you not to get married.” His voice almost breaks on the last word. Allie realizes in that moment that if he’d asked...God, if he’d asked, she might’ve done what he wanted. (She would’ve wanted it, too.) Harry lets out this little laugh. “But fuck. We’ve never even been together, Allie. It felt insane to think I had any right.”

Allie feels a lump in her throat, tears threatening to form. 

(She hasn’t cried over Tyler. Not since the night she took the ring off.)

She pushes her hand into her hair, leans her elbow on the back of the sofa. Harry tilts his head and looks at her sort of adoringly, like he likes that she’s here, and she’s comfortable, and they’re talking. And a little like he’s happy she’s smiling about what he just said, and isn’t bothered. 

“I think of you as my ex-maybe,” she tells him, and the smile he gives her is just so perfect she can’t stop looking at him. 

“Really?” She nods. Harry sets his glass on the table, gets up, and walks over to sit next to her. He sets his hand on her thigh over the blanket so easily, so smoothly, that she thinks it might make her crazy. “I’ve wanted you in some way or another since I was 20 years old, I think.”

This is foolish. There’s no way that was non-stop, but she gets it. She gets it because it’s the same for her. He’s just been so much more direct about it with her than she’s been with him. 

“Well,” she says, and gives him what she hopes is a flirty look. It is, if the way he draws his breath is any indication. “What should we do about that?”

His fingers flex against her thigh, but he says, “Nothing, probably, when you’re two weeks removed from being engaged.”

He’s right, but it’s not the answer she wanted. “Yeah,” she says, and then puts on this little smile and shakes her head. “Yeah, true.”

He’s just watching her, and then he tilts his head, and his eyes drop to her lips, and _yes_. Yes, _please_ let him kiss her. 

“If I didn’t think this has the potential to be something real, I’d be taking you to bed right now,” he tells her, voice all low, which is _not helping_. She swallows, then meets his eyes, and there’s something there that...Yeah, he definitely means his words. He adds, “I don’t want you to be with someone else.”

She shouldn’t smile. It’s wrong to smile. She’s the one who didn’t give him a chance. And she’s not delusional, okay? Look at him. He’s gorgeous and a lawyer and a _flirt_ and there’s no way he’s just been sitting around waiting for her. But it’s different. She wants to hear about his relationships, whoever he’s dated and how that went. But she wants him for herself. It doesn’t even feel like a new thought. She’ll have to reflect on that more later. Later, when he’s not sitting in front of her looking like he could give her any goddamn thing she wanted if she’d let him. 

She should let him. 

And when he falters a moment, like she’s taken too long to say something back and he thinks maybe he’s gone too far, said too much or revealed feelings she’s not ready for, she just looks at him and thinks she wants to be the one to give him everything, too. To keep him from having that sad look on his face. To make sure he doesn’t end up with this too-short haircut again. To keep his shirts and let him see her in them whenever he wants. 

“Okay,” she says, and he glances up again, brow furrowed like he doesn’t know what that means. She can’t really get a grasp on how long she’s been thinking about this since the last thing he said. 

“What?”

“Okay.” She smiles, pushes her hand into his hair just to see what it’ll feel like. It’s got some product in it; something waxy that’s definitely softer than it looks. She still misses his old cut. She needs to stop obsessing about his fucking hair. He’s just watching her. “I won’t be with anyone else.”

She’s not saying she’ll be with him. Because it’s a given. It feels like a given. It just feels messy to say it right now when her ex-fiance is literally moving his things out of her apartment right now. Like, showing up here with a cheap bottle of wine is different from committing to some kind of relationship. It’s a very big difference. 

He swallows, looks like there’s more he wants to say. What he comes out with is, “Okay,” but she can tell, too, that he’s really trying not to smile too big. It looks really fucking good on him. 

And then he asks if he can kiss her. Allie’s laughing when she nods. They shouldn’t do this, either. She just doesn’t care. 

… … …

Harry’s not an optimist. He’s better than he used to be - Jesus, the amount of catastrophizing he’s done in his life is legitimately alarming - but he still has to force himself into positivity instead of thinking the worst of things or worrying himself into a near panic. He’s more sure of himself - which he gets made fun of for - but he knows there’s a difference between actually being sure of yourself and being a cocky little brat who’s overcompensating. And more often than not, even when he’s looking at all the ways something could go wrong, it’s because he needs to be prepared. For work, or investments, and all that shit. 

Allie slows him down a little. She will very literally make him stop and smell flowers, which he felt fucking stupid for the first five times she did it, but she literally planted her feet on the sidewalk and arched a brow like she was absolutely not moving until he did what she wanted him to. She insisted they watch the top 10 movies of all time as rated by IMDB users, which was a long weekend spent mostly in his place, with Allie insisting they both remove all work-related apps and email from their phones for the full 72 hours. And when they went to her parents’ place overnight just a couple months into actually dating, she’d insisted he ride one of the horses and made fun of him the whole time for how stiff he was and how many times he’d asked how much longer they were meant to do it.

They still don’t see each other every day. He’d like to. They both work a lot because they feel like they need to - especially Allie, who works with a bunch of men who don’t take her seriously. Harry’s sort of trying to work up the nerve to start talking about them moving in together. It’s fucked, because it feels too soon and like he's been waiting forever at the same time. They don’t see each other every day, but they’re definitely in love with each other. He thinks they were both terrified of how fast it happened. He’s still a little scared of how hard it hits him sometimes when she does something fucking adorable, or sexy, or funny. Or when, one of the first times he went to her place to spend time with her, he showed up and she was wearing jeans and his Harvard sweater, which looks a little more faded than he remembers. Like, he seriously thinks he fell for her on their first actual date, when they’d met for dinner and ended up closing the place, talking for literally hours, and then Harry walked her home and she didn’t invite him in but told him she wanted to.

They don’t see each other every day, and he hasn’t seen her in a couple because they both have busy weeks, and he wants to laugh when he’s taking the elevator down to the lobby of this building one of his clients has an office in, and the doors open on the 9th floor and Allie gets on. She smiles immediately, but they’re not the only ones here. Harry leans his hand on the railing next to him and checks her out when she turns around to face the front. He thinks she’s doing that to tease him. He likes it. 

He knew she had a meeting this afternoon, too. They’ve been messaging back and forth. It’s only 2pm, so he’s heading back to his office and he assumes she’s heading back to hers, too. 

She steps off first, waits for him, and god, she looks really good in this outfit she’s got on. He’s seen it before, but that doesn’t matter. He thinks he commented on it last time, too. 

“Fancy meeting you here,” she says, trying to hold back her grin but failing miserably. Harry wants to kiss her, but won’t do it here, not when whoever she was meeting could be around, or whatever. He just knows how hard she works to be taken seriously. He’s not going to jeopardize that. 

“Yeah, we really need to stop meeting like this,” he tells her, and they start towards the revolving doors to head out onto the street. He sees their reflection in the glass; her in her green pants, white button down and black blazer, him in his suit. They look good together. His hand in his pocket and her hair curling around her face like that. 

“I like it,” she says, and steps into the revolving door before him. He likes it, too. He tries hard not to think about what it means that they’ve got this history of standing in front of one another unexpectedly. Once they’re both on the street, she smiles and adds, “I just got your text.” 

He grins a little as they start walking, slides his eyes her way. His last message to her was before his meeting, and he was replying to the message in which she was asking when she could come over and if he wanted to order in. He’d replied with something a little dirty about staying in with her and how he’d like to use that time. 

Anyway. 

“You didn’t answer my question,” she says, and then loops her arm through his. Her office is just a few blocks away. He’s got enough time in his day he can walk her there, then grab an Uber back to his building. “When can I come over?”

He’s not lying when he says, “Literally any time you want.”

She tilts her face towards his as they wait at a light. “Desperate, much?” she asks, and yeah, she’s joking, but...you know. 

“Yeah,” he says, then leans down and presses his lips to hers. “Tonight?”

“It’s a date.” She likes to say shit like that. Like this is casual. He thinks it’s cute. “I’ll stop off at home and grab a couple things after work.” 

Harry bites his tongue to stop from starting a conversation they won’t be able to finish. The one about her giving up her place, or them finding a place together, or something. Not having to coordinate schedules and bring overnight bags to spend time together. 

“I’ll see you then,” he says, and then they’re in front of her building. “If I don’t run into you again before.”

Allie laughs, leans up to kiss him - which is sort of a surprise, but a very welcome one - and wiggles her fingers at him as she heads for the entrance. Harry watches her go. He likes knowing when he’s going to see her next. The novelty of that isn’t bound to wear off soon.


End file.
